European Court of Justice rules that 'right to be forgotten' doesn't apply outside the EU

ECJ rules that Google can't be compelled to de-link EU right to be forgotten requests worldwide

Google has won a landmark ruling at the European Court of Justice after the European Union's highest court ruled that the so-called ‘right to be forgotten' does not apply outside the EU.

The judgement came today as the ECJ ruled that the search engine giant does not need to remove links to websites featuring information that an individual has demanded must be de-linked.

The ruling confirms the January 2019 opinion of ECJ advocate general, Maciej Szpunar, who wrote that the right to be forgotten could only legally by applied across EU member states.

The latest case stems from Google's long-running dispute with France's privacy watchdog CNIL. In 2015, the French data protection regulator ordered that all links either containing false information about a person or that could unfairly harm their reputation should be removed on all of Google's platforms across the world.

Google had argued that to do so would affect the principle of freedom of speech and refused to comply with CNIL's demands. It was fined €100,000 fine by CNIL in response. Google therefore challenged this at France's Council of State, which turned to the ECJ for guidance.

The ECJ's ruling means that when Google receives an appropriate request to references to online material, it will only be compelled to do so on European versions of the Google search page.

The ruling was not unexpected, following Szpunar's preliminary opinion in January.

Szpunar wrote that he was "not in favour of giving the provisions of EU law such a broad interpretation", adding: "[If] worldwide de-referencing were permitted, the EU authorities would not be able to define and determine a right to receive information, let alone balance it against the other fundamental rights to data protection and to privacy."

During its legal battle, Google also won the backing of Microsoft, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and privacy advocacy group Article 19.

The right to be forgotten arose out of a complaint by Spanish citizen Mario Costeja González, who argued that newspaper articles relating to the sale of property he owned over debts appeared prominently on Google when he - or anyone else - Googled his name.

The right to be forgotten was firmly established when the ECJ ruled in his favour. Since then, hundreds of thousands of right to be forgotten complaints have been filed - often by somewhat dubious people, such as politicians, seeking to cover up past misdeeds.

In one particular case in London, Google had argued that people were using the right to be forgotten "to rewrite history or a right to tailor your past, but this is what the claimant would like to use it for".

Almost as soon as the right to be forgotten ruling was made, Google was inundated with a quarter of a million requests for delinks, and a year later was compelled to also remove links to websites tracking right to be forgotten links.