HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT
Federal Court of Justice – paragraph 129 above; see also, conversely, the
CJEU’s Google Spain judgment (C-131/12) – paragraph 73 above, and the
Guidelines on its implementation – paragraphs 77 and 79 above).
211. Accordingly, although in the context of a balancing exercise between
the right to freedom of expression and the right to respect for private life these
two rights are to be regarded as being of equal value, it does not follow that
the criteria to be applied in conducting that exercise all carry the same weight.
In this context, in fact, the principle of preservation of the integrity of press
archives must be upheld, which implies ensuring that the alteration and,
a fortiori, the removal of archived content is limited to what is strictly
necessary, so as to prevent any chilling effect such measures may have on the
performance by the press of its task of imparting information and maintaining
archives. Hence, in applying the above-mentioned criteria, particular
attention should be paid to properly balancing, on the one hand, the interests
of the individuals requesting the alteration or removal of an article concerning
them in the press archives and, on the other hand, the impact of such requests
on the news publishers concerned and also, as the case may be, on the
functioning of the press as described above.
(c) Application to the present case
212. The Court notes at the outset that the Liège Court of Appeal based
its decision on the following criteria in ordering the anonymisation of the
article in the online archive: the facts had to have been disclosed lawfully in
the first place and had to be of a judicial nature; there could be no
contemporary interest in their disclosure; the facts could not be of historical
interest; a certain time had to have elapsed between the two disclosures; and
the person concerned could not be a public figure, had to have an interest in
being reintegrated into society and had to have discharged his or her debt (see
paragraph 28 above).
213. The Court must now examine, having regard to the margin of
appreciation left to the national authorities in resolving a conflict between
Article 8 and Article 10 of the Convention, whether the assessment carried
out by the Liège Court of Appeal was consistent with that resulting from the
criteria set out above (see paragraph 205), the application of which must also
take into account the specific characteristics of cases concerning the alteration
of lawful newspaper articles in the online archives on grounds of the “right to
be forgotten”. If that is the case, the Court would require strong reasons to
substitute its own view for that of the Court of Appeal (see paragraph 201
above).
(i) The nature of the archived information
214. As regards the nature of the information in question, the Court
considers that it should first be ascertained whether the information relates to
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