CYIL vol. 12 (2021)

Ondrej Hamuľák – Lusine Vardanyan – Hovsep Kocharyan CYIL 12 (2021) aware of this fact. It points out that the purpose of the EU data protection law is to guarantee a high level of protection throughout the EU. 50 This means that the assertion of the legality of only non-universal application of the right to be forgotten could interfere with the EU’s goal of ensuring a high level of personal data protection. In its turn, Article 29 Working Party (hereinafter – “WP29”) stated that “in order to give full effect to the data subject’s rights as defined in the Court’s ruling, delisting decisions must be implemented in such a way that they guarantee the effective and complete protection of the data subjects’ rights and that EU law cannot be circumvented. In that sense, limiting delisting to EU domains on the grounds that users tend to access search engines via their national domains cannot be considered a sufficient means to satisfactorily guarantee the rights of the data subjects according to the ruling”. 51 The WP29 added, that “in practice, this means that, in any case, de-listing should also be effective on all relevant domains, including .com”. 52 The approach of the CJEU on the admissibility of the local application of the right to be forgotten was recognized by some researchers as a victory for Google for global freedom of expression. 53 Although the Court’s judgment itself, at first glance, considers the local application of this right in conjunction with geo-blocking measures to be an acceptable solution in this situation, it should be noted that this is a direct path to the fragmentation of the Internet. J. Daskal highlights the risk of such fragmentation , he argues that: “(…) countries with less liberal views about freedom of speech and expression can effectively create a fenced version of the internet based on arbitrary parameters (…)”. 54 In addition, the commitment to the “local” application of the right to be forgotten in the position of the CJEU is not so clearly expressed. The existence of such an unambiguous position that would exclude the global application of this right would mean the weakening of the protection of the right under consideration by the Court itself. It seems to us that the CJEU does not consolidate such an unambiguous position today and is unlikely to adopt such a consolidation in favour of the “local” application of the right to oblivion in the near future. 5. Or maybe a “universal” application of the right to be forgotten after all? It is noteworthy that a categorical prohibition of the possibility of the global application of the right to be forgotten in the judgments is unlikely to be found. On the contrary, in the detailed analysis of the Court’s considerations in the CNIL case one can see indirect recognition of the possibility of the global application of the law in question. As one can see the Court made clear that while the EU law does not currently require worldwide de- referencing, “it also does not prohibit such a practice” 55 . The CJEU stated that while nothing in EU law can be interpreted as imposing a global enforcement of the right to de-referencing, 50 Recitals 10, 11 and 13 of the GDPR. 51 WP29 Guidelines on the Implementation of the CJEU Judgment on ‘Google Spain and Inc v. Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos (AEPD) and Mario Costeja Gonzalez’ C-131/12, adopted on 26 November 2014, p. 3. 52 Ibid. 53 COWBURN, P.: Google win in right to be forgotten case is victory for global freedom of expression. September 24, 2019. Available at: https://www.article19.org/resources/google-win-in-right-to-be-forgotten- case-is-victory-for-global-freedom-of-expression/. 54 DASKAL, J.: Internet Censorship Could Happen More Than One Way. The Atlantic . 25 September 2019. Available at: https://flipboard.com/@TheAtlantic/internet-censorship-could-happen-more-than-one-way/ f-260e7e11b8%2Ftheatlantic.com. 55 Case C507/17 Google LLC v CNIL . p. 72.

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