“Right to be forgotten” restricted to searches from within EU member states

24 September 2019

In a decision today that has probably been overlooked in the UK due to rather more dramatic proceedings in London the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has issued a preliminary ruling in favour of Google and other search engine operators that they need apply the so-called “right to be forgotten” under EU law only to searches from domain names associated with member states.  The right cannot be enforced worldwide.

The Court concluded :

On a proper construction of Article 12(b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and of Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and repealing Directive 95/46 (General Data Protection Regulation), where a search engine operator grants a request for de-referencing pursuant to those provisions, that operator is not required to carry out that de-referencing on all versions of its search engine, but on the versions of that search engine corresponding to all the Member States, using, where necessary, measures which, while meeting the legal requirements, effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, to the links which are the subject of that request.

To read the full judgment (English version) click here.

To read the BBC News report click here.

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