On Sept. 24, 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided that the “right to be forgotten” does not require a search engine operator to carry out de-referencing on non-EU member state versions of its search engine. The case relates to a penalty of €100,000 that the French data protection authority, CNIL, had imposed on Google in March 2016. In granting a de-referencing request, the search engine – on free speech grounds – declined to apply the de-referencing worldwide to all domain-name extensions of its search engine. Arguing for global freedom of expression, Google appealed the penalty and filed an application for the annulment of CNIL’s decision with the French Council of State. The French court then referred several questions concerning the territorial scope of the “right to be forgotten” to the CJEU for preliminary ruling.

The CJEU reviewed the case both under the former Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC (Privacy Directive) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which replaced the Privacy Directive on May 25, 2018.

Click here for the full GT Alert, which discusses the CJEU ruling.