Within the Article 29 Working Party Plenary (composed of the representatives of the national data protection authorities of EU Member States), held on the 25th – 26th of November 2014, the Guidelines on the implementation of the Court of Justice of the European Union judgment on “Google Spain SL and Google Inc vs. Agencia Española de Protección de datos (AEPD) and Mr. Mario Costeja González” were adopted.

These Guidelines contain a common interpretation and unitary criteria to be applied by the national supervisory authorities of the European Union Member Stated when handling the complaints received, within the meaning of Directive 95/46/EC

The press release issued is available at the following address: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/press-material/press-release/art29_press_material/20141126_wp29_press_release_ecj_de-listing.pdf

In this context, we state that, based on Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided, in Case C-131/12 between Google Spain SL and Google Inc. versus the Spanish Data Protection Authority and Mr. Mario Costeja Gonzale, that, in order to respect the rights provided by Article 12 (b) and Article 14 (1) (a) of Directive 95/46/EC (right of intervention and right of deletion), the data controller of a search engine has the obligation to remove links to web pages that are published by third parties and contain information relating to a person from the results displayed following a search made on the basis of that individual’s name. Following this decision, Google Inc. stated that it has made the necessary efforts in offering the data subject the possibility to submit a removal request of the personal data to Google, by accessing the following address: https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_eudpa?product=websearch&hl=en

Within the same reunion, Opinion no. 9/2014 on the application of Directive 2002/58/EC to device fingerprinting was adopted.

Biroul Juridic şi Comunicare