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HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT THE FACTS 11. The applicant was born in 1959 and lives in Genappe (Belgium). I. THE BACKGROUND TO THE CASE 12. The applicant is the publisher of the daily newspaper Le Soir, one of Belgium’s leading French-language newspapers. 13. In a 1994 print edition of the newspaper an article of around twenty lines in length, concerning a series of fatal road-traffic accidents occurring within a few days, reported on a car accident caused by G., who had been under the influence of alcohol at the time. The accident led to the death of two people and injured three others. The article mentioned G.’s full name. G. was a doctor at the relevant time and continues to exercise that profession. In 2000 he was convicted in connection with the incident and sentenced to a suspended term of two years’ imprisonment. He served his sentence and was rehabilitated in 2006. 14. Since 13 June 2008 the newspaper’s website has provided an electronic version of its archives dating back to 1989, including the above-mentioned article. When the archives were published online, and throughout the proceedings before the domestic courts, the articles were accessible free of charge on the website. 15. On 15 June, 7 July and 19 August 2010 G. wrote to the legal department of the public limited company S.A. Rossel et Compagnie, the owners of Le Soir, requesting that the article be removed from the newspaper’s electronic archives or at least rendered anonymous. In support of his request G. referred to the fact that he was a doctor and that the article appeared on the list of search results when his name was typed into search engines including the newspaper’s internal search engine and Google. He feared being dismissed on this account or losing patients, referring to “a professional death foretold”. 16. On 16 June 2010 the legal department of S.A. Rossel et Compagnie refused to remove the article from the archives. On 29 December 2010 S.A. Rossel et Compagnie, in a registered letter, served notice on the managing director of Google Belgium to delist the article. Reminders were subsequently sent by registered post on 24 January and 23 February 2011. Before the domestic courts and the Court, the applicant stated that these steps had produced no response. 17. On 30 March 2012 G. brought the case before the Council for Journalistic Ethics (Conseil de déontologie journalistique – “the CDJ”), the self-regulatory body of the French and German-speaking media in Belgium. He pointed out that if a search was carried out at that time via the search engine of the website www.lesoir.be based on his first name and surname, the article of 10 November 1994 appeared in sixth place, that is, on the first page 6

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Hurbain v. Belgium

Case Law

Country

Belgium

Country Location

Latitude: 50.855421148205785

Longitude: 4.557127118111282

Country Location (linked Case Law): Belgium

Decision Date: Jul 4, 2023

Case Status: Closed

Case Outcome (Procedural)

Inadmissible
Motion Denied

Case Outcome (Disposition)

Injunction, Order, or Motion Denied/Vacated

Keywords

Access to Information
Digital Rights
Freedom of Press
Media/Press
Privacy, Data Protection and Retention
Right to be Forgotten

Judicial Body: European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)

Court Name: The Grand Chamber, European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)

Case Number: Application no. 57292/16

Case Summary: The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in a majority judgment, held that an order to anonymise an article in a newspaper’s electronic archive (which referred to a person’s involvement in a fatal road traffic accident for which they were subsequently convicted) did not breach the applicant publisher’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicant, Patrick Hurbain’s newspaper Le Soir published an article reporting on a series of fatal car accidents which had occurred in a short period of time. It mentioned the full name of one of the drivers involved, “G” who successfully sued the applicant and received an order in their favour. The ECtHR upheld the decision of the domestic courts and emphasized that a person who is not a public figure may acquire notoriety in the context of a criminal process/trial but that may decline with the passage of time, with the effect that they may be able to rely on the right to be forgotten in order to go back to being someone who is unknown to the public. In reaching such conclusion, the court tailored a seven-criteria test which is to be applied in right to be forgotten cases.

Case Significance: Decision (including concurring or dissenting opinions) establishes influential or persuasive precedent outside its jurisdiction.

In this judgment the Grand Chamber has provided important clarification as to the approach to be taken to “right to be forgotten” requests directed towards content providers and, in particular, towards media archives. The judgment provides clear criteria for deciding whether or not a right to be forgotten request should be accepted by the operators of a media archive. Those criteria have been specifically tailored to cases in which “right to be forgotten” requests are made against content providers rather than search engines.

Attention is drawn to the following points in relation to “right to be forgotten” clams:

The right is not likely to be available in respect of reports of the most serious criminal offences, or ones of historical or statistical significance.

The longer the time that has passed the stronger the claim will be.

Current contribution to a debate of public interest is not decisive – historical and scientific value is also important.

There must be a properly duly substantiated claim of serious harm to private life – rehabilitation is important but not enough on its own.

The measure which is least restrictive of press freedom must be used.

The majority were not persuaded that by the dissenters view that the Court should recognise an Article 10 “right to remember” (see in particular the concurring opinion of Judge Krenc, at [23]).

The Grand Chamber’s approach is very similar to that which is undertaken in a right to erasure case brought under Article 17 of the UK GDPR. Article 17(3) provides for erasure requests to be refused where the processing is necessary for exercising the right to freedom of expression and information and for archiving; that demands a balancing exercise. The European Data Protection Board’s Guidelines 5/2019 on the criteria of the Right to be Forgotten in the search engines cases under the GDPR (part 1) [pdf] and the CJEU have laid down criteria for this balancing exercise (e.g., C-136/17 GC v CNIL [77]). The Strasbourg Court and the CJEU have embraced each other’s jurisprudence in this context and it is likely that the outcome of the balancing exercise would be the same under both regimes.

Decisions of the Court of Human Rights are persuasive but not binding in domestic law but Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention are the “very content” of the tort of misuse of private information and a definitive decision on the balancing of these rights is one which the English courts are likely to follow.

Although the decision has attracted criticism from free speech campaigners such as Media Defence and Article 19 the Grand Chamber struck a careful balance between free speech and privacy rights. As noted above, the Grand Chamber considered that the obligation for a publisher to anonymise an article that had been published initially in a lawful manner fell within the “duties and responsibilities” of the press which are expressly referred to in Article 10(2). The decision confirms that media organisations need not proactively monitor their archives on an ongoing basis or go back and remove names from historical articles. As is the case under data protection law, they need only assess the competing rights and interests in response to a right to be forgotten request.

The judgment suggests that right to be forgotten requests/claims may be more likely to be regarded as proportionate (and thus succeed) where they are narrowly targeted to focus on getting an article anonymised rather than removed entirely. The case makes it clear that a person seeking to invoke the “right to be forgotten” in respect of media archives faces a substantial hurdle. This is likely to be difficult to overcome in the case of a public figure or someone involved in an event of historical significance.

Related Caselaw (self)

Source URL: Global Freedom of Expression

Collection

CIPIT
Columbia

Date Updated: Jan 30, 2024

Primary Documents

CASE-OF-HURBAIN-v.-BELGIUM-1.pdf
English
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CYRILLA: Global Digital Rights Law

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Hurbain v. Belgium

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