EU advisor sides with Google on ‘right to be forgotten'

An EU rule forcing search engines to comply with requests to remove links should be limited to Europe, the senior legal advisor to the bloc’s top court said yesterday in a boost for web giant Google. The legal clash pits Google against France over the “right to be forgotten” rule, which the US firm would like to see limited to European domains of its website -- such as Google.fr or Google.de -- and not Google.com or domains outside the European Union.

In his non-binding opinion, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar told the European Court of Justice that EU law “should limit the scope of the de-referencing that search engine operators are required to carry out, to the EU,” a statement said. Szpunar is “not in favour of giving the provisions of EU law such a broad interpretation that they would have effects beyond the borders of the 28 member states,” the statement added.

Judges at the ECJ usually, but not always, follow the legal opinions of the court’s advocate general. The two sides are battling over a shock 2014 decision at the same court which granted the right for individuals, under certain conditions, to have references to them removed from search engine results.