On January 10, 2018, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued his opinion in the case of Google v. CNIL (Case C-507/17). In the opinion, the Advocate General stresses that the right to be forgotten must be balanced against other fundamental rights, such as the legitimate public interest in accessing information.
The Advocate General concluded that when search engine operators receive a request to be forgotten under Directive 95/46/EC, they are not required to carry out global de-listing of specific links on all the domain names of their search engines.
The audience concerned is European and the search engine operator shall delete the disputed links from the from the results generated following a search performed within the EU. The search engine operator is required to take all measures at his disposal to ensure an efficient and complete de-listing, also by using the so-called “geo-blocking” technique. However – according the Advocate General – the de-listing should not concern searches performed outside the EU.
The panel of 15 CJEU judges will rule in 2019.
More information on the requests for a preliminary ruling is available here.
Google v. CNIL, Case C-507/17, is available at http://curia.europa.eu…
The right to be forgotten has been judicially recognized by the CJEU with the Google Spain judgment (Case C-131/12). More on case C-131/12 is available at http://www.technethics.com…
For more information about how privacy is implemented in Europe, contact Francesca Giannoni-Crystal & Federica Romanelli.