Administrative and economic sanctions under French commercial law

Abstract

The publication examines the provisions on administrative and economic sanctions of the French Commercial Code and other acts of French legislation. It was concluded that the French experience of regulation of commercial relations is based on complex solutions involving a combination of private-law and public-law regulation.
 It is substantiated that during the last century the commercial legislation of France was saturated with public legal provisions. The new French Commercial Code of 2000 incorporated a significant number of provisions that are public law, including administrative and criminal sanctions.
 The presence of provisions in the French Commercial legislation, which by nature of administrative influence on business entities can be recognized as administrative and economic sanctions, is established in many spheres of relations. These sanctions include typical penalties imposed on economic entities for antitrust violations, violations of reporting and other rules of conducting commercial activities, as well as other numerous sanctions of an organizational nature. It is substantiated that the disciplinary responsibility of certain professions in commerce defined in the FCC can be qualified as a type of administrative and economic sanctions relevant to the Ukrainian legal sense.
 Taking into account the experience of French commercial law, it was concluded that the ideas of reducing the discretion of state bodies when applying sanctions to business to eliminate the risks of corruption and abuse are not confirmed in modern European legislation. It is obvious that this follows from the quite reasonable assumption that the fight against corruption should affect the specific offender, and not destroy the effectiveness of the state's response to offenses, including in the business sphere.
 Several trends in the legislative regulation of administrative and economic sanctions in France have been identified, including attempts to solve the problems of the ratio of administrative sanctions and criminal penalties on legal entities, the expansion of judges' approaches to the assessment of administrative sanctions imposed on merchants from the point of view of compliance with procedural provisions and respect for human rights.
 It was concluded that the introduction of criminal liability of legal entities into national law cannot take place without an analysis of the problems caused by relevant institutions in foreign countries, in particular in France.