Brussels, 27/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - It has been a full-on week for the US multinational, Google, which, as well as receiving a resolution from the EP calling for it to be broken up (see other article), it was also the subject of guidelines from European regulators on personal data protection, following the Google/ Spain ruling reached on 13 May by the European Court of Justice on the principle of the “right to forget”.
As it had promised before the summer, the Article 29 Group, which brings together data protection authorities in member states, published its guidelines on Wednesday 26 November. These will help implementation of the main principles in this ruling. Although EU ministers for justice have not yet decided what response to give it, the Article 29 Group pointed out that this decision constituted a legal precedent for European citizens and their requests for de-listing certain domains that they believe create problems (Google was obliged to put forward a “grievances” formula for Internet users, following this decision) in all of the .com sites and not just the results from the searches provided at national level (such as google.be).
In its recommendations, the Article 29 Group therefore calls on Internet users in EU countries to be able to obtain de-listing that also exists in .com versions, because limiting itself to a geographical zone would not be enough to protect private life. The Article 29 Group points out that search engine results based on the name of the person will only be involved and that this will not mean removing original content that can be found again using other key terms.
The group also issued 13 criteria that will help the national authorities deal with complaints from Europeans having to deal with Google's refusal to comply with this Court decision. Since the ruling by the Court, the US search engine has received more than 602,400 requests for de-listing (especially in France and Germany) and has provided a positive follow-up to 42% of these requests.
A new European Data Supervisor
Giovanni Buttarelli will be the new European Data Supervisor (EDS), according to an announcement made on Thursday 27 November, by Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament. Wojciech Rafa³ Wiewiórowski will be Deputy Supervisor. On 20 October, the civil liberties committee nominated Buttarelli and Wiewiórowski as the main candidates for the two posts. (SP)