Beaussonie, Guillaume (2023) Do Criminal law and Compliance form a system ? In: Compliance monumental goals Frison-Roche, Marie-Anne (ed.) Bruylant. Series “Compliance & Regulation” pp. 169-180. ISBN 9782802770794

Abstract

Because of its powerful repressive action on freedoms, criminal law is a system that must not develop. Everything, on the contrary, contains it within the strictest limits, major moderating principles – right to security, principle of legality and its corollaries, presumption of innocence etc. – being included in this set to ensure that it will not expand excessively.

However, as long as reasonable proportionality remains between the goals pursued and the means mobilized, its extension does not appear illegitimate because these goals, precisely, are the most important for a given society. It is nothing less, in fact, than "to defend [...] actions harmful to society", to use Article 4 of the Declaration of 1789, in other words to preserve fundamental "social values" : human dignity, life, physical and psychological integrity, property, integrity etc.

Law of gravity, causes and consequences, criminal law is not always that of effectiveness, the threat and the imposition of a sentence not enough to deter criminals. Hence the temptation, in a number of strategic areas, to replace or supplement criminal law with other equally repressive rules.

Because criminal law is no longer the only one to pursue the most ambitious goals. Faced with administrative repression for several decades now, for example in tax and financial matters, it is today associated with - even penetrated by - compliance mechanisms whose objectives match its own: the fight against money laundering, the fight against corruption, environmental protection, preservation of everyone's right to their data, etc.

Driven by what Professor Marie-Anne Frison-Roche describes as “monumental goals” , compliance thus participates, in its original and different way, in determining and defending what matters most to society. Moreover, by reaffirming the need to prevent certain behaviors in particular, recourse to compliance indicates, beyond the symbol, the goals that we cannot or cannot not achieve, which is why we gives itself more means to do so, even to the point of cumulating repressive rules.