Compliance Law tends towards "Monumental Goals". This puts the concern, the calculation and the control of proportionality at the center. Proportionality is one of the most common references for compliance practices and strategies, but paradoxically, one of the least well defined. Perhaps even one of the most elusive.

For the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the principle of proportionality allows the quantitative easing policies of the European Central Bank (ECB) to be monitored. This principle is linked to nothing less than the principle of democracy and is the basis of the control of ultra vires. In French law, proportionality refers to the provisions of Article 8 of the Déclaration des droits (Bill of Rights) of 1789, according to which the law should only establish penalties that are strictly and obviously necessary. In many areas of civil or business life, the compliance of behavior and the consequences of non-compliance are assessed on the basis of a graded assessment by the censor (competitor, regulator or judge).

Proportionality calls for action, which opens up a margin of appreciation to take into account the facts or circumstances. It also allows for the exercise of control over abuse of rights or excess of power. It goes beyond the office of the judge or the censor to forge one of its tools: the control of proportionality, which is obviously not the proportionality of the control.

How to integrate proportionality into compliance practices and strategies?

Does it introduce a certain tolerance in the assessment of situations and is it thus a factor of rediscovered freedom in the development of risk matrices?

Conversely, is it not synonymous with increased vigilance on the part of compliance officers, by leaving open the possibility of a reinforced control of their acts or decisions, by the evaluation of their advisability and not of their conformity alone?

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