Legal requirements compliance in ISO 14001

"Useless laws weaken necessary laws" Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, 1758.

Identifying a company's legal requirements is an increasingly complex process, as is keeping up to date with regulatory changes. It is therefore very difficult not only to understand the provisions of the texts, but also and above all to assess the degree and cost of regulatory compliance for an activity.

This constant evolution of regulations calls for the implementation of a tool to monitor these changes and ensure that a company's activities are always compliant with these regulations: regulatory watch.

Regulatory watch can be defined as the activity of anticipating local, national, European or international regulatory texts likely to have an influence on a company's activities or strategy. It is necessary in two cases:

• for all, since no one is supposed to be ignorant of the law. The regulations do not define a method for implementing regulatory monitoring or assessing regulatory compliance, but rather an obligation to achieve results in terms of environmental protection;

• for organizations setting up an environmental (or safety or other) management system: there is an obligation to identify applicable legal requirements (regulatory watch) and assess compliance with these requirements.

How can you effectively understand and manage your regulatory obligations to ensure compliance? How can regulatory intelligence be organized so that it becomes a proactive and strategic tool for an organization? What are your management system obligations?