French court refers the 'right to be forgotten' battle with Google to EU court

The French Court on Wednesday, 20 July, referred the ‘right to be forgotten’ issue between **Google** and French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), to the Court of Justice of the European Union . As per a Reuters’ report, the ‘right to be forgotten’ is the bone of contention between the two parties, where the Alphabet owned Google denied removing the personal data of its users from the search engine globally, while the CNIL demanded the removal of personal content globally. The ‘ right to be forgotten’ comes under the protection of personal data in the European commission, ‘a person can ask for personal data to be deleted once that data is no longer necessary (Article 12 of the Directive).’ According to the data regulation authorities, the regulation allows “the data protection authorities to impose 2 percent of annual worldwide turnover, if companies do not respect the rights of the citizen.” The case had previously erupted in 2014, where Google complied with European Commission of the Court of Justice’ ‘right to be forgotten’ in all European countries, but not globally. Thereby, the same authority had slammed Google with a hefty fine of 100,000 euros in 2016. In **2016** Google had said, “We comply with the laws of the countries in which we operate. But if French law applies globally, how long will it be until other countries – perhaps less open and democratic – start demanding that their laws regulating information likewise have global reach?”