In a landmark decision on 24 September 2019 1, the
Court of Justice of the European Union ("ECJ") ruled that
the 'right to be forgotten' has limited territorial
application. In particular, when exercised against a controller
with multinational or global operations, the right to be forgotten
only applies to those operations being undertaken within Member
States of the European Union ("EU").
The case was referred to the ECJ by the French Council of State
following Google's refusal to pay a €100,000 fine imposed
in 2016 by the French data protection regulator, the Commission
nationale de l'informatique et des libertés
("CNIL"). The fine was imposed because
Google refused to de-reference (remove) links to search listings,
containing personal data which was detrimental to an individual,
from Google domains outside of the EU. Google refused despite
receiving a formal notice from the CNIL to remove the relevant
personal data from all versions of its search engines
