The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has made their preliminary opinion concerning a case that began between Google and France’s National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (CNIL).

The case was sparked when the CNIL fined Google €100,000 for not removing an individuals name across all their domains. Google had only implemented its geo-blocking capability to domains accessible in the EU but not globally.

Google resisted the claim, saying that it would set a precedent for authoritarian regimes to limit free speech. What followed was an appeal to the ECJ to asking them to annul the fine.

Maciej Szpunar, the advocate general for the ECJ stated:

“The search engine operator is not required, when acceding to a request for de-referencing, to carry out that de-referencing on all the domain names of its search engine”.

This means that Google should only be required to enforce the “right to be forgotten” in the EU, but not in parts of the globe where it does not apply.

The “right to be forgotten” allows for citizens of the EU to ask companies to remove personal information that is no longer relevant.

The ECJ isn’t the only ones to share this opinion. The article also brings attention to Richard Cumbley, a London law firm solicitor, who believes that the court’s final judgement should agree with their initial opinion.

“The opinion contains a clear recommendation that the right to remove search results from Google should not have a global effect. There are a number of good reasons for this, including the risk other states would also try and suppress search results on a global basis. This would seriously affect people’s right to access information.”

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