Developments in the Right to be Forgotten

Human rights lawyers are familiar with the importance of the publication of historical information on gross and systematic human rights violations so that they will not be forgotten and will hopefully never happen again. In terms of international human rights law this approach is also reflected in requirements related to effective remedies and restrictions that human rights provisions impose on amnesties and on statutes of limitations for serious human rights violations. A newer phenomenon for human rights lawyers is the idea of a ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ as an aspect of the right to privacy. Section 2 explains the European Commission’s 2012 Proposal for a Regulation on General Data Protection. Section 3 considers the Opinions of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in the Google Spain case on whether the operator of an Internet search engine should have the responsibilities of a controller of data protection. Section 4 assesses a 2013 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights inWe grzynowski and Smolczewski v Poland in which that Court had to consider the protection of personal rights in a context of published material which continued to appear online. Section 5


Introduction
Human rights lawyers are familiar with the importance of the publication of historical information on gross and systematic human rights violations so that they will not be forgotten and will hopefully never happen again. 1 In terms of international human rights law this approach is also reflected in requirements related to effective remedies and restrictions that human rights provisions impose on amnesties and on statutes of limitations for serious human rights violations. 2 A newer phenomenon for human rights lawyers is the idea of a 'Right to Be Forgotten' 3 as an aspect of the right to privacy. Section 2 explains the European Commission's 2012 Proposal for a Regulation on General Data Protection. Section 3 considers the Opinions of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in the Google Spain case on whether the operator of an Internet search engine should have the responsibilities of a controller of data protection. Section 4 assesses a 2013 judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in We grzynowski and Smolczewski v Poland in which that Court had to consider the protection of personal rights in a context of published material which continued to appear online. Section 5 appraises the implications of the material in Sections 2^4 for the development of the right to be forgotten.

The Right to be Forgotten in the European
Commission's Proposal for a Regulation on General Data Protection The principal driver behind the idea of the right to be forgotten is the massive expansion in the availability and accessibility of information associated with the digital world of the internet. 4 Information is a complex phenomenon. It is certainly not a neutral phenomenon. It reflects how history is remembered. 5 There is a real sense in which, thanks to search engines, 6 memory is now perfect and infinite. 7 Information and how it is shared are crucial determinants in how culture is understood and exercised and how identity is constructed and perceived. 8 Control over information means control over accountability and transparency, each of which are important values in a democratic system. 9 The growth in 'big data' and databases, both public and private, has been massive 10 and it has been followed by the development of technology for extracting meaningful and commercially or societally useful information by data matching, deanonymisation and data mining. 11  The Next 10 Years (London, 2013), available at: www.bis.gov.uk/assets/foresight/docs/identity/ 13-523-future-identities-changing-identities-report.pdf [last accessed 16 September 2013] (suggesting that the Internet has not produced a new kind of identity; rather, it has been instrumental in raising awareness that identities are more multiple, culturally contingent and contextual than had previously been understood). 9 See Ausloos, 'The ''Right to be Forgotten''^Worth Remembering ' (2012)  impossible. 12 There has been some development of the idea of the right to be forgotten by national courts in Europe and Argentina 13 and by data protection agencies in Europe. 14 In 2009 France published a voluntary Charter of Good Practices on the right to be forgotten on social networks and search engines. 15 However, the major focus for discussion of the right to be forgotten has been in the context of the Proposal for a Regulation on General Data Protection from the European Commission of the European Union. 16 Article 17 of the Proposal provides the individual's (the data subject's) 'right to be forgotten and to erasure' . 17 Under Article 17: The data subject shall have the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data relating to them and the abstention from further dissemination of such data, especially in relation to personal data which are made available by the data subject while he or she was a child, where one of the following grounds applies: a. the data are no longer necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected or otherwise processed; b. the data subject withdraws consent on which the processing is based . . ., or when the storage period consented to has expired, and where there is no other legal ground for the processing of the data; c. the data subject objects to the processing of personal data pursuant to Article 19 [the right to object]; d. the processing of the data does not comply with this Regulation for other reasons. Personal data is defined broadly as 'any information relating to a data subject' whether it 'relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer's IP address.' 18 It is not just information voluntarily provided by that subject. The Proposal further elaborates and specifies the right of erasure provided for in Article 12(b) of Directive 95/46/EC 19 and provides the conditions of the right to be forgotten, including the obligation of the 'controller', 20 which has made the personal data public, to inform third parties on the data subject's request to erase any links to, or copy or replication of, that personal data. Article 17 also integrates the right to have the processing restricted in certain cases. 21 In human rights terms the idea of the right to be forgotten is commonly located within the ambit of the right to privacy. 22 One aspect of a proposed right to be forgotten concerns the degree of control that an individual has on the public availability of, and use of, personal data information about themselves. 23 Issues of consent, control and the possibilities to secure deletion are central issues covered by the Proposal. The critical economic and financial interests of those who gather, use and sell the information was also acknowledged, particularly in the context of the European Union (EU). 24 A second aspect concerns the use of information obtained about individual persons in particular decision-making contexts such as employment. 25 18 European Commission's press release announcing the proposed comprehensive reform of data protection rules, 25 January 2012, available at: europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-46_en. A third and much more complicated aspect concerns the idea that an individual's (including a child's) autonomous ability to develop their personality, identity and reputation should not be overly restricted by information about their past, 26 even if the information is true. 27 The classic example is that of information on a person's criminal convictions after they have served their sentence. In some jurisdictions some convictions become spent after a certain period of time. 28 There are other privacy dimensions of the right to be forgotten that could be formulated. 29 The range of dimensions makes legal formulation of the right and its attendant remedies difficult to formulate. 30 Moreover, inasmuch as the right is conceived of as an aspect of privacy, there is no doubt that modern communication technologies are forcing a rethink of conceptions of privacy. 31 The Commission's aim was to have the Regulation adopted in 2014 with its taking effect in 2016 after a transition period of two years. The European Parliament has proposed a number of amendments to Article 17 and related Articles. 32 The Regulation is of major international significance because the EU rules must apply even where personal data is handled abroad by companies beyond the borders of the EU but that are active in the EU market and offer their services to EU citizens. 33

Google Spain, SL, Google Inc v Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos
A critically important question is whether for the purposes of Directive 95/46/ EC, an Internet search engine provider is a ' controller' of personal data on third-party source web pages. In Google Spain, SL, Google Inc v Agencia Espanola de Proteccion de Datos 35 the issue before the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) concerned an order from Spain's highest court Audiencia Nacional to Google to delete information from its search engine results concerning a Spanish citizen's financial problems. These had been detailed in two old news reports both of which were republished at a later date in its electronic version made available on the Internet. The individual concerned considered that this information should no longer be displayed in the search results presented by the Internet search engine, operated by Google, when a search was made of his name and surname. Advocate General Ja« a« skinen's Opinion was that Google was not generally to be considered as a 'controller' of the personal data appearing on web pages it processed, who, according to the Directive 95/46/ EC, would be responsible for compliance with data protection rules. 36 Although it deals with complex technical issues related to the Internet, the Opinion is dominated by human rights concerns. Central to his conclusion was that the general scheme of the Directive, most language versions of it and the individual obligations it imposed on the controller were based on the idea of responsibility of the controller over the personal data processed, in the sense that the controller was aware of the existence of a certain defined category of information amounting to personal data and the controller processes this data with some intention which related to their processing as personal data. 37 However, provision of an information location tool, such as a search engine, did not imply any control over the content included on third party web pages. It did not even enable the Internet search engine provider to distinguish between personal data in the sense of the Directive, which related to an identifiable living natural person, and other data. The Internet search engine provider could not in law or in fact fulfil the obligations of the controller provided in the Directive in relation to personal data on source web pages hosted on third-party servers. 38 Therefore, a national data protection authority could not require an Internet search engine service provider to withdraw information from its index except in cases where this service provider had not complied with exclusion codes 39 or where a request emanating from a website regarding an update of cache memory had not been complied with. 40 A possible 'notice and take down procedure' 41 concerning links to source web pages with illegal or inappropriate content was a matter for national civil liability law based on grounds other than data protection. The Advocate General's Opinion was also clear that the Directive did not establish a general 'right to be forgotten'. 42 Such a right could not therefore be invoked against search engine service providers on the basis of the Directive, even when it was interpreted in accordance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. 43 The Directive granted any person the right to object at any time, on compelling legitimate grounds relating to his particular situation, to the data controller's processing of data relating to him, save as otherwise provided by national legislation. However, a subjective preference alone did not amount to a compelling legitimate ground and thus the Directive did not entitle a person to restrict or terminate dissemination of personal data that he considered to be harmful or contrary to his interests.
The Opinion noted that the reference in the case before it concerned personal data published in the historical archives of a newspaper. It cited the observations of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Times Newspapers Ltd v United Kingdom (Nos 1 and 2) 44 that Internet archives made a substantial contribution to preserving and making available news and information: Such archives constitute an important source for education and historical research, particularly as they are readily accessible to the public and are generally free. . . . However, the margin of appreciation afforded to States in striking the balance between the competing rights is likely to be greater where news archives of past events, rather than news reporting of current affairs, are concerned. In particular, the duty of the press to act in accordance with the principles of responsible journalism by ensuring accuracy [my emphasis] of historical, rather than perishable, 39 The publisher of a source web page can include 'exclusion codes', which advise search engines not to index or store a source web page or to display it within the search results. Developments in the Right to be Forgotten information published is likely to be more stringent in the absence of any urgency in publishing the material. 45 In the Advocate General's Opinion, a newspaper publisher's freedom of information protected its right to digitally republish its printed newspapers on the Internet. The authorities, including data protection authorities, could not censure such republishing. In the Times Newspapers case the ECtHR had demonstrated that the liability of the publisher regarding accuracy of historical publications may be more stringent than that which applies to current news, and may require the use of appropriate caveats supplementing the contested content. However, there could be no justification for requiring digital republishing of an issue of a newspaper with content different from the originally published printed version. That would amount to falsification of history. 46 Requesting search engine service providers to suppress legitimate and legal information that had entered the public domain would entail an interference with the freedom of expression of the publisher of the web page. This would amount to censorship of his published content by a private party. 47 However, it was possible that the secondary liability of the search engine service providers under national law may lead to duties amounting to blocking access to third-party websites with illegal content such as web pages infringing intellectual property rights or displaying libellous or criminal information. 48 It is submitted that the Advocate General's Opinion with respect to the liability of search engine service providers is sensible, balanced and pragmatic. It focusses on the genuine possibilities of the controller exercising responsibility. If followed by the CJEU, the approach in the Spanish Google case will undoubtedly have a very significant impact on the drafting of the Regulation on Data Protection.

We grzynowski and Smolczewski v Poland
In some contexts the wish to publish aspects of information about individuals necessarily means that the right to freedom of expression, including access to information, also comes into play. 49 This was the situation that faced the 45 See supra n 36 at para 123. In Times Newspaper, ibid. at para 48, the ECtHR also observed that libel proceedings brought against a newspaper after a significant lapse of time may well, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, give rise to a disproportionate interference with press freedom under Article 10. 46 Ibid. at para 129. 47 Ibid. at para 134. 48 Ibid. at para 135. 49 Article 17(3) of the proposed Regulation acknowledges freedom of expression, Article 80 the processing of information for journalistic purposes or for 'artistic and literary expression' and Article 83 for 'historical, statistical and scientific research' purposes as limitations on the right to be forgotten. Article 80 obliges Member States to adopt exemptions and derogations from specific provisions of the Regulation where necessary to reconcile the right to the protection of personal data with the right of freedom of expression. It is based on Article 9 ECtHR in We grzynowski and Smolczewski v Poland. 50 The decision of the ECtHR is important in its own right but is particularly significant because of the impending accession of the EU to the ECHR. 51 This means that any EU Regulation on Data Protection could be challenged before the ECtHR. In 2002 two journalists working for the national daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita had published an article alleging that W and S, who were lawyers, had made a fortune over the years by assisting in shady business deals in which politicians were involved. The journalists had alleged that W and S had taken advantage of their positions at the expense of the public purse by obtaining unjustified benefits from the manner in which they had carried out their professional roles as liquidators of State-owned companies in bankruptcy. W and S had succeeded in claims under Articles 23 and 24 of the Civil Code for the protection of their personal rights. The national court found that the journalists had failed to contact the applicants and that their allegations were, to a large extent, based on gossip and hearsay. The journalists had failed to take the minimum steps necessary in order to verify the information contained in the article by at least getting in touch W and S and trying to obtain their comments. The allegations had not been shown to have had a plausible factual basis. The journalists had smeared W and S's good name and reputation. The Court allowed W and S's claim in its entirety, by ordering the journalists and the editor-in-chief to pay, jointly, PLN 30,000 to a charity and to publish an apology in the newspaper. In 2003 the Warsaw Court of Appeal (CA) dismissed an appeal from the newspaper, endorsing the findings of fact and the reasoning of the first-instance court. It indicated that it was desirable for a comment on the outcome of the civil proceedings to be added to the article on the website. The obligations imposed by the courts were subsequently complied with by the defendant newspaper.
In July 2004 W and S again sued the newspaper under the same provisions of the Civil Code. They alleged that they had recently found out that the article  remained accessible on the newspaper's Internet website. They submitted that the article was positioned prominently in the Google search engine and that anyone seeking information about them had very easy access to it. The article's availability of the article on the newspaper's website, in defiance of the earlier judicial decisions, created a continuing situation which enabled a large number of people to read it. The applicants' rights were thereby breached in the same way as had occurred through the publication of the original article. It rendered the protection granted by the judgments in their favour ineffective and illusory. The applicants sought an order requiring the defendants to take down the article from the newspaper's website and publish a written apology for their rights having been breached by way of the article's continued presence on the Internet. They sought compensation in the amount of PLN 11,000 for non-pecuniary damage. The 2004 claims were not successful. For the CA it was of of cardinal importance for the assessment of the case that the article had been published on the newspaper's website in December 2000. The Court noted that W and S had submitted that they had only learned of its online publication a year after the judgment given in April 2003 had become final. However, the fact that in the first set of proceedings in 2002 W and S had failed to make a specific request for remedial measures in respect of the online publication made it impossible for the Court to examine facts which had already existed prior to that judgment. W and S could not lodge a new claim based on factual circumstances which had already existed during the previous set of proceedings. The Court noted that the existing online publication was not a fact which would have been impossible to establish at that time.
W's claim before the ECtHR was inadmissible for failure to comply with the six-month time limit and for failure to exhaust domestic remedies as he had not filed a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court. Poland also argued that S had not exhausted domestic remedies as he could have applied to the domestic courts seeking an interim injunction. However, the ECtHR observed, inter alia, that 'the Government failed to adduce any case-law of the domestic courts or examples of the media's practice to show that a rectification request under Article 31 of the Press Act has ever been successfully used to have a defamatory article present on a newspaper's website removed from it or rectified by the addition of a reference to a judgment finding it defamatory'. 52 As for the merits of S's case, the ECtHR recited its standard jurisprudence on Article 8 of the ECHR covering its object, the requirement for interferences, the positive obligations inherent in respect for private life and the wide margin of appreciation enjoyed by Contracting Parties in determining the steps to be taken to ensure compliance with the Convention, account being taken of the needs and resources of the community and of individuals, 53 that as a matter of principle, the rights guaranteed by Articles 8 and 10 (freedom of expression) deserved equal respect 54 and that, in the context of freedom of expression constituting one of the essential foundations of a democratic society, the safeguards guaranteed to the press were particularly important. 55 The most careful of scrutiny under Article 10 was required where measures or sanctions imposed on the press were capable of discouraging the participation of the press in debates on matters of legitimate public concern. Furthermore, particularly strong reasons must be provided for any measure limiting access to information which the public had the right to receive. At the same time, the press must not overstep certain bounds, particularly as regards the reputation and the rights of others. The ECtHR devoted a specific paragraph to the Internet: The Court has held that the Internet is an information and communication tool particularly distinct from the printed media, especially as regards the capacity to store and transmit information. The electronic network, serving billions of users worldwide, is not and potentially will never be subject to the same regulations and control. The risk of harm posed by content and communications on the Internet to the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and freedoms, particularly the right to respect for private life, is certainly higher than that posed by the press. Therefore, the policies governing reproduction of material from the printed media and the Internet may differ. The latter undeniably have to be adjusted according to technology's specific features in order to secure the protection and promotion of the rights and freedoms concerned . . . 56 The ECtHR recalled its earlier jurisprudence that Internet archives fall within the ambit of the protection afforded by Article 10 of the ECHR. 57 It stressed the substantial contribution made by Internet archives to preserving and making available news and information. Such archives constituted an important source for education and historical research, particularly as they Developments in the Right to be Forgotten were readily accessible to the public and are generally free. While the primary function of the press in a democracy was to act as a 'public watchdog', it had a valuable secondary role in maintaining and making available to the public archives containing news which has previously been reported. The maintenance of Internet archives was a critical aspect of this role. 58 The ECtHR recalled its judgment in the Times Newspapers case 59 that, in the context of an Article 10 complaint brought by a newspaper, a requirement to publish an appropriate qualification to an article contained in an Internet archive, where it had been brought to the notice of a newspaper that a libel action had been initiated in respect of that same article published in the written press, did not constitute a disproportionate interference with the right to freedom of expression. 60 Such an obligation in respect of an Internet archive managed by a publisher of a newspaper itself was not excessive. The ECtHR had also noted with approval that the domestic courts in the Times Newspaper case had not suggested that potentially defamatory articles should be removed from archives altogether. 61 The ECtHR noted that the presence of the offending article on the newspaper's website and the State's positive obligations under Article 8 arising in this context were examined by the Polish domestic courts. During the first set of civil proceedings the applicants had failed to make claims regarding the article's continued presence on the Internet. Therefore, the courts could not adjudicate on this matter. The judgments given in the first case did not create for the applicants a legitimate expectation to have the article removed from the newspaper's website. 62 It was further noted that the domestic courts found that the article had been published on the newspaper's website simultaneously with the print edition in December 2000. The applicant did not challenge this finding in his appeals. Therefore, the second case against Rzeczpospolita brought by the applicant in 2004 concerned the same factual circumstances. The Internet archive of Rzeczpospolita was a widely known legal resource for Polish lawyers and for the general public, often used and accessed by members of legal professions. No arguments had been submitted to the ECtHR to justify the applicant's failure to ensure that the scope of the first defamation claim encompassed the article's presence on the newspaper's website. 63  given an opportunity to bring his claims concerning the Internet version of the article before the courts and to have them examined in judicial proceedings incorporating a full array of procedural guarantees. It had not been demonstrated that no appropriate legal framework was in place at the relevant time.
Nor that the absence of such a framework made it impossible for the applicant to defend his rights. 64 The ECtHR noted the finding made by the Warsaw Regional Court that the article in question had been published in the print edition of the newspaper. That Court expressed the view that it was not for the courts to order that the article be expunged as if it had never existed. The ECtHR accepted that it was not the role of judicial authorities to engage in rewriting history by ordering the removal from the public domain of all traces of publications which had in the past been found, by final judicial decisions, to amount to unjustified attacks on individual reputations. Furthermore, it was relevant for the assessment of the case that the legitimate interest of the public in access to the public Internet archives of the press was protected under Article 10. 65 The ECtHR's view was that the alleged violations of rights protected under Article 8 should be redressed by adequate remedies available under domestic law. In this respect, it was considered noteworthy that the Court of Appeal observed that it would be desirable to add a comment to the article on the website informing the public of the outcome of the civil proceedings in which the courts had allowed the applicants' claim for the protection of their personal rights claim. The ECtHR was therefore satisfied that the domestic courts were aware of the significance which publications available to the general public on the Internet had for the effective protection of individual rights. In addition, the courts showed that they appreciated the value of the availability on the newspaper's website of full information about the judicial decisions concerning the article for the effective protection of the applicant's rights and reputation. 66 However, the ECtHR emphasised that S did not submit a specific request for the information to be rectified by means of the addition of a reference to the earlier judgments in his favour. It was neither shown nor even argued before the ECtHR that under the applicable legal framework S could not have requested the court to specify the steps that they wished to be taken in respect of the Internet publication with a view to securing the effective protection of their reputation.

Developments in the Right to be Forgotten
Taking into account all the circumstances of the present case, the ECtHR accepted that the State had complied with its obligation to strike a balance between the rights guaranteed by Article 10 and Article 8. A limitation on freedom of expression for the sake of S's reputation in the circumstances of the present case would have been disproportionate under Article 10. 68 Therefore, the ECtHR unanimously held that there was no violation of Article 8.

Appraisal
As noted, the right to be forgotten is complex to formulate in legal terms because its ambit encompasses a wide range of different matters. 69 Some are closely related to traditional aspects of privacy but some go much wider. The right as proposed by the European Commission faces significant political and commercial opposition and, as noted in 2013 the European Parliament proposed a number of amendments relating to the right to be forgotten. 70 Even if these can be overcome the developments considered above clearly have important implications for the legal ambit of the right to be forgotten. First, freedom of expression clearly applies to the Internet and Article 10 of the ECHR protects the legitimate interest of the public in access to the public Internet archives of the press. In particular, Internet archives constitute an important source for education and historical research, particularly as they are readily accessible to the public and are generally free. Policies governing reproduction of material from the printed media and the Internet may differ. The latter have to be adjusted according to technology's specific features in order to secure the protection and promotion of the rights and freedoms concerned. Many cases will concern a balance between rights to privacy and expression. However, the margin of appreciation afforded to States in striking the balance between those competing rights is likely to be greater where news archives of past events, rather than news reporting of current affairs, are concerned. While an aggrieved applicant must be afforded a real opportunity to vindicate his right to reputation, libel proceedings brought against a newspaper after a significant lapse of time may well, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, give rise to a disproportionate interference with press freedom under Article 10.
Secondly, it is crucial that in the domestic courts proceedings the claimant seeks a remedy specifically in relation to publication on the Internet and specifies the steps that they wished to be taken in respect of the Internet publication with a view to securing the effective protection of their reputation. This is so irrespective of whether the claim is for defamation or violation of privacy or personal rights. Thirdly, it may be that the limits of an individual's remedy for defamation or violation of personal rights lies in the addition of a degree of contextualisation 71^a comment, caveat or reference on the Internet version of the relevant article to the outcome of the civil proceedings concerning the applicants' claim. This is consistent with the argument that the liability of the publisher regarding the accuracy of historical publications may be more stringent than those of current news. However, there is no justification for requiring digital republishing of an issue of a newspaper with content different from the originally published printed version. The latter would be regarded as censorship and the rewriting of history. Fourthly, search engine service providers will not normally be regarded as data 'controllers' and so will not be liable under European data protection regulations. It is possible that the secondary liability of the search engine service providers under national law may lead to duties amounting to blocking access to third-party websites with illegal content such as web pages infringing intellectual property rights or displaying libellous or criminal information. The reference to 'displaying libellous . . . information' must be taken to refer to the repeated publishing of the original information on the Internet rather than to the existence of the originally libellous article in an Internet archive. It is increasingly argued that the accessibility of the Internet, the massive expansion of data, the phenomenon of social media and the speed of technological innovation have combined to change conceptions of public space and rendered the concept of privacy as a social norm as passe¤ . 72 The developments in the legal ambit of a right to be forgotten considered in this article are interesting in part because they mark a not insignificant reassertion that privacy is seen as having a continual societal and instrumental value that must be given some degree of protection. If the legal status of the right to be forgotten continues to develop, both in national jurisdictions and within a future EU regulation, 73 the situation will be reached where the historical aspects of one's private life have greater privacy protection than contemporary aspects. Achieving a balance between privacy and censorship that is credible, sensible and practicable requires sophisticated and creative lawyering. 74,75 below one of its online articles. The ECtHR held that the finding of liability by the Estonian courts was a justified and proportionate restriction on the portal's right to freedom of expression, in particular because the comments were highly offensive; the portal failed to prevent them from becoming public and profited from their existence, but allow their authors to remain anonymous; and the fine imposed by the Estonian courts was not excessive. On the issue of lawfulness of the interference, the portal had argued that an EU Directive on Electronic Commerce, as transposed into Estonian law, had made it exempt from liability. However, the ECtHR found that it was for national courts to resolve issues of interpretation of domestic law and, therefore, did not address the issue under EU law. This is a very significant ruling on the assumption that the same approach would be followed to the interpretation by national courts of a future EU Regulation on General Data Protection and encompassing the right to forget.