16 December 2019
On 2 December 2019 the European Data Protection Board adopted the Guidelines (no. 5/2019) on the criteria of the right to be forgotten in the search engines cases under the GDPR. The guidelines have been released in the version for public consultation; stakeholders shall send comments by 5 February 2020.
The document aims to interpret the right to be forgotten in the search engines cases in light of the provisions of Article 17 of the GDPR. It first explores the various grounds provided for in the first paragraph of Article 17; it then addresses the exceptions to the right to be forgotten enshrined in the third paragraph of Article 17.
The publication of the guidelines follows the Costeja judgment of the Court of Justice (C-131/12), focusing specifically on the right to request delisting of search results, and the more recent Google v. CNIL case (C-136/17), which has clarified the territorial scope of application of such right.
