03-June-2014
The European Court of Justice has issued a decision concerning the “right to be forgotten”, resulting from a prejudicial question made by the Spanish National Audience court in the course of a controversy between the Spanish Data Protection Agency and Google Spain. The judgment construes the Directive 95/46/CE on Data Protection and makes two interesting points: first, it declares that a search engine established in Spain must comply with local data protection regulations; secondly, and as a necessary consequence of the first point, it declares the search engine is responsible from the processing of personal data. This means that search engines must apply the users’ rights to oppose and cancel their personal data, as provided for in Spanish regulations, and that they are obliged to remove inadequate, irrelevant or excessive personal data upon the user’s request.
Read the decision in English here.