On 24 September 2019 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) gave two judgments (Cases C-507/17 and C-136/17) ruling that: (i) de-referencing by Google should be limited to EU Member States’ versions of its search engine with some important qualifications; and (ii) when Google receives a request for de-referencing relating to a link to a web page on which sensitive data are published, a balance must be sought between the fundamental rights of the person requesting such de-referencing and those of internet users potentially interested in that information.

Google has already faced the issue related to the right to be forgotten before the CJEU under Directive 95/46/CE (Directive) in the landmark “Google Spain” case[1] where the judges ruled that a search engine operator can be obliged to remove links to information about an individual from its list of results. This decision led to a large number of requests from individuals to remove such links and notably four complaints to the CNIL from individuals following the rejections by Google of their requests for de-referencing (see point 2 below).

The CJEU has ruled in Google’s favour.

1.      The right to be forgotten ends at the borders of the EU

In its decision of 10 March 2016 the CNIL had imposed a fine of €100,000 on Google Inc. because of the latter’s refusal, when granting a de-referencing request, to apply it to all its search engine’s worldwide domain name extensions.

Consequently, in its first judgment[2], the CJEU was asked to clarify the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten to determine whether a search engine operator is required to carry out that de-referencing on all its search engine’s worldwide domain name extensions or whether, on the contrary, it is required to do so only at a European or national level.

The CJEU’s decision starts by pointing out that, in the current globalised world, the access by internet users – including those located outside the EU – to the referencing of a link referring to information about an individual whose centre of interests is situated in the EU is likely to have “immediate and substantial effects on that person within the Union itself”, suggesting a worldwide de-referencing duty.

However, the Court qualifies this statement by stating that:

• many non-EU countries may take a different approach to the right to de-referencing or may not even grant such a right; and
• the right to the protection of personal data, not being an absolute right, must be balanced against other fundamental rights in line with the principle of proportionality.

In light of the foregoing, the Court ruled that an “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 …”. The Court underlined that such a de-referencing must, if necessary, be accompanied by  “measures which … 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, [through a version of that search engine outside the EU], to the links which are the subject of that request”.

The Court nevertheless pointed out that, while EU law does not currently require the de-referencing, by an operator such as Google, to apply to all the versions of its search engine, such practice is not prohibited. A balance between a data subject’s right to privacy and the protection of personal data concerning him/her, on the one hand, and the right to freedom of information, on the other, should be made by the authorities of Member States and could in certain cases still require the operator to carry out a worldwide de-referencing.

It should also be noted that Google used geo-blocking to stop a user apparently in an EU Member State from accessing the content de-referenced in the Google search page in his/her Member State through a search page of a non-EU Member State where the content was not de-referenced. When the CJEU refers to “effective prevention” and “serious discouragement” it is clear that this type of additional technological measure will be required; what is not clear is how much further a Member State authority can require a search engine to go.

2.      Prohibition on processing certain categories of sensitive data: fundamental rights vs. freedom of information

In its second judgment,[3] four individuals had requested that Google de-reference various links, appearing in the lists of results displayed by the search engine following searches of their names, resolving to web pages published by third parties. The web pages included a satirical photo-montage of a politician, articles mentioning an individual as a public relations officer of the Church of Scientology, the judicial investigation of a politician and the sentencing of another person for sexual assaults on minors respectively.

Following Google’s refusal to de-reference, the four individuals brought complaints before the CNIL, seeking an order for Google to de-reference links. The CNIL did not take their complaints up. The parties then brought their case before the French Council of State (“Conseil d’Etat”) which referred a number of questions to the CJEU, including whether the prohibition imposed on other controllers on processing special category personal data – such as political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs and sex life –  without falling within one of a restrictive set of grounds also applies to the operator of a search engine.

The Court found that it did. In this context, the judges emphasised that operators of search engines are responsible “not because personal data referred to in those provisions appear on a web page published by a third party but because of the referencing of that page and in particular the display of the link to that web page in the list of results presented to internet users following a search”.

This allowed the Court to go on to find that a search engine operator only needed to comply with the very restrictive grounds for processing special category personal data once a request for removal (and the search engine operator’s verification) had been made. This neatly allowed searches which return special category personal data in the results to remain viable.

The Court then recalled its Google Spain’s judgment which held that while a data subject’s rights may, as a general rule, override the freedom of information of internet users, the balance between these rights must be assessed on a case-by-case basis taking into account:

• the nature of the information in question and its sensitivity for the data subject’s private life; and
• the interest of the public having that information, an interest “which may vary, in particular, according to the role played by the data subject in public life”.

Consequently, the Court concluded that, where search engines such as Google are facing a request by a data subject to exercise his/her right to be forgotten relating to a link to a web page containing special category personal data, they must consider all the relevant factors of the specific case and take into account “the seriousness of the interference with the data subject’s fundamental rights to privacy and protection of personal data” so that only the links in the list of results, displayed following a search on the basis of the data subject’s name, that are “strictly necessary for protecting the freedom of information of internet users” are retained.

The Court added that, where the processing relates to information made public by the data subject, an operator of a search engine may refuse to accede to a request for de-referencing provided that:

• the processing meets all the other conditions of lawfulness; and
• unless the data subject has the right to object to that processing on compelling legitimate grounds relating to his/her particular situation.

The Court also took an expansive view of the definition of criminal convictions data by holding that reporting on an investigation or trial was caught regardless of whether the data subject was convicted or not subsequently. It held that:

• where the search returned criminal convictions data “which no longer reveal the current situation” then the operator, in light of all the circumstances of the case, must balance the data subject’s fundamental rights and the public’s right to freedom of information, considering “the nature and seriousness of the offence in question, the progress and the outcome of the proceedings, the time elapsed, the part played by the data subject in public life and his/her past conduct, the public’s interest at the time of the request, the content and form of the publication and the consequences of publication for the data subject”; and
• if the results (e.g. because of the order in which links appear) suggest a criminal conviction is still current when it is not (and there is still a public interest in the older information remaining accessible), then on request from a data subject, the search engine operator must adjust the results so that the up to date accurate information is most prominent.

Our take

Although the first CJEU judgment would appear to put an end to the French data protection authority’s absolutist vision of the territorial scope of the right to be forgotten, the detail is somewhat different. The door remains open in particularly serious cases for a data protection authority to find that de-listing in all EU member states, coupled with geo-blocking access to search pages in non-EU countries, would be insufficient to protect the affected data subject’s privacy. Indeed on the very day the judgments were published, the CNIL underlined that, since a global de-referencing is not prohibited, it still has the authority to force a search engine operator to delist results on all the versions of the search engine where justified in a particular case to guarantee the rights of the individuals concerned (see the CNIL press release here).

As for the second judgment, the Court confirmed that a similar balancing test between the data subject’s fundamental rights and the public right to freedom of information should apply in the context of the processing of criminal convictions data.

In our view, although these judgments go some way to curbing the extraterritorial impact of the GDPR, they still leave the door open for a worldwide application in the most egregious of cases.

They also do little to relieve search engine operators’ burdens in adjudicating right to be forgotten requests – the balancing test remains as precarious as ever – and we therefore expect to see continued complaints and CJEU references in this area.

For more information, the full text of the judgments can be found here and here.

[1] CJEU, 13 May 2014, C-131-12, Google Spain SL, Google Inc. / Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González
[2] CJEU, 24 September 2019, C-507-17, Google LLC, successor in law to Google Inc. v Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL)
[3] CJEU, 24 September 2019, C-136-17, GC and Others v Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (CNIL)