In Belgium, the Flemish Region had adopted the Decree of 23 December 2010 to exemp those providing electricity with a renewable source to pay the rate of injection into the electricity transmission network. The Region stated that it was not an act tariff, thus falling under its jurisdiction. The decree, attacked by the energy regulator before the Belgium Constitutional Court, was canceled by the latter in a ruling dated July 12, 2012, because it is an act of pricing, under the only federal competence.
FRENCH
En Belgique, la Région flamande avait adopté le décret du 23 décembre 2010 pour exempter les producteurs d'électricité ayant pour source une énergie renouvelable du payement dû au titre de l'injection de l'électricité dans le réseau de distribution. La Région posait qu'il ne s'agit pas d'un acte de tarification, et que cela relevait donc de sa compétence régionnale. Ce décret, attaché par le Régulateur de l'Energie devant la Cour Constitutionnelle de Belgique, a été annulé par celle-ci dans une décision en date du 12 juillet 2012, parce qu'il s'agit bien d'un acte touchant à la tarification, pour laquelle seul des organes fédéraux sont compétents.
After the publication of the 21 January 2010 Ordinance implementing the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel (ACP - Prudential Control Authority), two decrees published on 3 March 2010 complete this legislation and define the institutional and budgetary workings of the new Authority.
Speaking to the press is a way for the Regulator to reach everyone, including policymakers, European institutions, and fellow Regulators who also seek to compete for space in the digital area.
As he reported: "Nous arrivons aujourd’hui, avec l'irruption du numérique, à un acte 2 de la régulation. Il y a 20 ans, on est passé du modèle PTT où l’Etat produisait le service public, au modèle d’État-régulateur qui a permis l’ouverture à la concurrence. Ce modèle vise à une bonne organisation du marché avec des outils de pilotage efficaces, mais parfois très intrusifs : les licences mobiles, qui sont des contrats assortis de sanctions administratives en cas de non-respect des obligations, ou le dégroupage, qui est une intervention sur la propriété privée… Aujourd’hui il nous faut franchir une étape nouvelle et nous projeter dans la suite, repenser nos outils pour permettre, en complément, une régulation plus focalisée, plus humble et plus agile". We can translate this passage as it follows : “As of today, considering the onset of digital, we are getting to a second phase for Regulation. Over the past 20 years, we went from the ‘PTT model’, where the State provided for public service, to a new Regulatory State model that enabled competition to thrive. This model aims for good market organization with effective management tools, which may be sometimes very intrusive: e.g., mobile licenses, which are agreements that include administrative penalties in the event of failure to comply with its provisions, or unbundled access, which relates to a State intervention on private ownership… Today, we need to take it another step further and plan for the future, reconsider our tools to allow for a Regulation that would be better focused, humbler and nimbler”.
Whatever “Phase 1” was would thus be already outpaced. Farewell stringent public service, so long market openings to competition. Such an understanding of Regulation was certainly consistent with the idea that Regulation was only meant to be temporary, namely considering the everlasting protection of personal data by the dedicated supervisory authority (Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés, CNIL)…
We would then need to implement “Phase 2” and, as Sébastien Soriano advises, to “Regulate by the multitude”, which is "a concept that includes consumers, but also users, observers, and the civil society as a whole. The key question is how to use the power of information to get the greatest possible leverage on the market while relying on the multitude. The answer is clear: Regulation by data"("La multitude, ce sont les utilisateurs, les observateurs, la société civile. Cela inclut les consommateurs, mais pas uniquement. Et la question centrale, c’est comment utiliser le pouvoir de l’information pour avoir un maximum d'effet de levier sur le marché et grâce à la multitude. La réponse, c’est la régulation par la data.").
Like all the others, the Telecom Regulator introduces himself as a sort of ‘natural’ Regulator for digital activities, as he relies on the key notion that is information. In doing so, he is seeking allies that are just as natural as he is— that is to say, consumers. Consumers fall indeed into the scope of the Regulator insofar as they provide him with the information he needs to Regulate the digital sector and space.
The Regulator thus does not define himself anymore as the one that protects consumers against the market, but as the one that binds the two together, transforming the complaint into a civic act: “There’s a problem. As a consumer, I am alerting you as a Regulator who has the means to regulate market failures and whom I shall let operate”.
In such a statement, the ARCEP not only becomes the ‘natural’ digital Regulator, but it also become the one that operates on the grounds of information brought by the web-user, who is protected by and who somehow benefits in return from the action of the Regulator.
Two concluding thoughts:
What a nimble reasoning indeed from the Regulator, who had initially been created to be the ‘container Regulator’, and who is now becoming, since Phase 2 is on its way, a kind of ‘overall’ Regulator that regulates both the container and the content.
This is a salient example that rationales and frameworks that were developed by the Banking and Financial Regulation are modelling Regulation in general: see whistleblowers, information, obsolescence of the ‘public service’.
Available in several languages, the document is titled: Dynamic telecoms market requires modern legal bases.
End of the document, the Confederation reports that it raises that State presence in the capital of Swisscom is legitimate (information that hasn't perhaps belong in a consultation document).
The consultation document intends to proceed with a progressive review". A first step of review will take place late 2015.
First, it will focus on international roaming, for which Swiss prices are too high but for which the ceiling price technique is rejected, the protection of youth or the need for market participants to register including Internet players.
In addition, the consultation focuses on increasing access to networks, including passive infrastructure, to increase competition. It is envisaged to grant the Federal Communications Commission (ComCom) ex officio powers.
Other issues will be discussed after 2015, for example universal service and neutrality in order to "not to break the dynamics of investment."
Operators have already protested about the narrowness of the consultation, in particular because the issue of optical fiber is not asked!footnote-5.
On May 28, 2010, the {Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques et des postes} (ARCEP — French postal and telecommunications regulatory authority) published a report it ordered from WIK Consult, which details the tangible and intangible benefits accruing to {La Poste} (The French postal service) as a result of its universal service obligation, which are to be included in calculating compensation provided to the universal service provider for its universal service obligations, in application of the European Union’s Third Postal Directive liberalizing the postal market in the European Union. This report is critical in tone, but {La Poste} takes issue with its methodology and conclusions.
What does Regulating to operators? How do they feel? Do they internalize? Does it means to them, simply a cost or an impact on their strategy on the markets?
The question is all the more important that you adhere to the theory of incentives, whereas the adequate regulatory techniques are those that produce the desired behavior by regulated operators.
The issue is not whether the Regulating is included in spending. This is acquired. For example, in two years the banks move internal forces of certain services, such as credit, to the compliance department and regulation. The regulation may represent a very high share of costs: it lies in the fact that through compliance the regulatory system has internalized the costs of regulation in the firms.
But does it make to change the strategic choice of the operator on the market, not only increase the number internal processes?
Mr. Blankfein Lloys who also sits on the board of the Harvard Law School, asked about the question of whether the bank doesn't suffer from the pressure of regulations and supervisors replied that must be considered especially in the very design of technical systems to meet compliance but that for him, Regulation isn't really an annoyance: it is a "background noise". He compares it to music: something that he listens a lot, but while he is doing its job. Something which remains outside.
This means that Regulation occupies its technical regulatory services but doesn't affect its own work of invest bank president.
We can rejoice, since it shows that Regulation doesn't impede free enterprise and the operator's choice. One might worry if Regulation should have an "educational" function wanting influence how the president himself decides. In this case, Regulation must cease to be a kind of expensive elevator music.
It is not sure that regulators and supervisors have the same understanding
The European Commission proposes a package to enhance consumer protection and strengthen consumer confidence in financial services, comprising deposit guarantee schemes, investor compensation schemes, and insurance guarantee schemes. The proposals were sent to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers for consideration.
The cost issue of regulation is a recurring issue.
One can complain specifically, when companies are protesting about the "cost of regulation" or when the topic is taken as an object of study, through the cost / benefit calculation.
A practical question of importance is whether there is a "legal question" or not.
The "juridicity" of a question is defined by the fact that discussing about this question has an effect on the outcome of a case before a judge. This concrete definition, leaving the judge's power, binding nature of the rule (here the balance between cost and benefit) the effectiveness of its decision before the judge, its consideration by him in the decision he makes, has been proposed in France by Carbonnier. It is opposed to a definition of Law by the source, the author of the rule, which identifies law for example through Parliament Acts, because the text is adopted by the legislator, listed source of law.
The first definition, more sociological, more flexible, giving the spotlight on judge better corresponds to a legal system which gives more room for ex post and for the judge. It is logical that we find more demonstrations of this conception in the common law systems.
However, the issue of cost / benefit is being debated before the Supreme Court of the United States, about the latest environmental regulations, adopted by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA). It is a question of law. It is under the empire of the judge.
For it is in this light that President Barack Obama in November 2014 asked a very costly regulation, and it was under his leadership that the Environmental Protection Agency has developed texts. Indeed, pollution of certain plants are the cause of asthma and laid in public health imperative to fight a regulation that results in a direct cost on firms. Indeed, some plants pollution is the cause of asthma and President Obama has asked public health imperative to combat by a regulation that results in a direct cost on the industry. The regulations adopted in 2012 they cost a $ 9 million, some claiming that future ones could result in billions of costs directly related to business The President emphasized by stating that the health of children was priceless.
By challenging those of 2012 before the Supreme Court, in the case Michigan v. EPA, this is the other texts that conservative states and companies have in mind because it is the principle that is posed: : does A regulator have the right to take regulations very "expensive" when the advantage, however legitimate it is, is small-scale in terms of costs? The Supreme Court, having chosen to handle the case, listened to March 25, 2015, the arguments of each other and discussed the case.
The question is the integration or not into the constitutional notion of "necessity of the law" of the "cost / benefit" calculation. This is a crucial point because the concept of "necessity of the law" is a common notion to the constitutions of many countries.
However, not only the so-called judges "conservatives" as Justice Antonio Scalia, took position felt it was crazy not "consider" the cost of new regulations from the expected health benefits, but also Justice Stephen Breyer called "progressive," said "irrational" the environmental regulator has not taken in consideration such an imbalance between cost and benefit.
It is true that Justice Breyer was formerly professor of competition law at Harvard.
Sustainable Development and Business Ethics. The Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD). Distinguishing and Relating the Pieces to Reach a Unitary Vision
Ordinance n° 2010-76 of 21 January 2010 establishes a new independent administrative authority designated as the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel (Prudential Control Authority), resulting from the merger of the approval and monitoring authorities of the banking and insurance sectors.
