The Extra-Territorial Reach of the EU's 'Right to Be Forgotten'

Abstract

In May of this year, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided that individuals can – under certain conditions – obtain removal of certain search results. In November, the Article 29 Working Party issued a set of guidelines concerning the implementation of the CJEU ruling. These guidelines state that search engines must implement the ruling “on all relevant domains, including .com”. Critics argue that the approach advanced by the Working Party goes a bridge too far, imposing European values onto non-EU jurisdictions. How far should the right to be forgotten extend, geographically speaking? Should Google, upon finding that an individual’s request is justified, modify its search results globally? Or should it only modify search results shown within the EU? The aim of this paper is answer these questions, using public international law as the normative framework.

Keywords: data protection, extra-territoriality, international jurisdiction, online content regulation, privacy, public international law, right to be forgotten