On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that there is no obligation under European Union law for search engines to “de-reference” search results of users who don’t reside in the EU’s 28 member states.
Since 2014, Europeans have had to the right to ask Google to take down links containing sensitive personal information about them, a request Google was obligated to complu with, especially after further obilgations were added by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018.
In 2015, the French Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des libertes (CNIL) had ordered Google to de-reference listings of pages that contained damaging or false information about a person, under the EU’s Right to be Forgotten laws (legally known as the Right to Be Delisted). Google has since introduced geoblocking features that hide such results from European users.
The verdict confirms that EU laws cannot apply outside of the EU’s borders. “Currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants request for de-referencing made by a data subject... to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine”.
The French privacy regulator had earlier argued that the law should apply to all of Google’s domains, not just those in the EU. Google, however, said that such a measure would be ripe for abuse by authoritarian governments with a motive to remove search results that could be damaging for them.
The court, however, did state that search engine operators must put measures in place to discourage internet users from attempting to access the same information
In 2016, Google was fined €100,000 by the CNIL for failing to take down results globally upon receiving an RTBD request. This case came about after Google challenged the fine, with the CNIL then pulling back its request but seeking counsel from the French Council of State which asked the ECJ for advice.
Google’s senior counsel welcomed the verdict, saying, “It’s good to see the Court agreed with our arguments and we’re grateful to the independent human rights organisations, media associations and many others round the world who also presented their views to the Court.”