Public service and public service obligations.

Summary In French law, public service is a central concept in the law of public action, the theoretical and doctrinal foundations of which are based on the guarantee of social solidarity and the preservation of a holistic general interest by the action of the State and public persons. However, if national law has known for several decades a specific notion called the "public service obligation", referring to a means of investiture of a third party partner of the administration for the management of a service of general interest, it is necessary to know that another conception of this notion is spreading today. Indeed, the law of the European Union knows a specific and commercial concept also called, for historical and practical reasons, the "public service obligation". This is based on a particular understanding of the general interest, the origin of which depends primarily on the economic operator's lack of interest in managing an activity. Thus, the public service obligation mainly participates in maintaining and restoring the equilibrium of a competitive market that is considered to guarantee the general interest and solidarity. But it also tends, in its implementation, to limit as much as possible the harm to competition that public intervention could generate. This is why, unlike the public service, the public service obligation regime implies and gradually imposes the outsourcing of general interest activities. This notion ultimately translates a specific vision of "public ordering" and thus distances itself from the national model of public service delegation. Through the public service obligation in its European sense, the public authorities can organize the market (they order it) and they can also solicit and stimulate it (they order it) so that the latter guarantees, through its balance, the existence and provision of services. This public service obligation imposes a set of management principles which, although close to the major laws of the French public service, tend to instrumentalize the action of the State for the benefit of the balance and dynamics of a now European market. The generalization and dissemination of the European notion of public service obligation, particularly through the conditions specific to the financing of public service, are disrupting the normative and conceptual framework relating to State action. This movement reflects a paradigm shift marking the disappearance of the interventionist State and the consecration of the authorizing State.