03/02/2020
CURIA - Documents
– when the parent company designates a subsidiary located in that Member State as its
representative and controller for two specific filing systems which relate to the data of
customers who have contracted for advertising with that undertaking,
or
– when the office or subsidiary established in a Member State forwards to the parent
company, located outside the European Union, requests and requirements addressed
to it both by data subjects and by the authorities with responsibility for ensuring
observation of the right to data protection, even where such collaboration is engaged
in voluntarily?
(b) Must Article 4(1)(c) of Directive 95/46 be interpreted as meaning that there is “use of
equipment … situated on the territory of the said Member State”:
– when a search engine uses crawlers or robots to locate and index information
contained in web pages located on servers in that Member State,
or
– when it uses a domain name pertaining to a Member State and arranges for searches
and the results thereof to be based on the language of that Member State?
(c) Is it possible to regard as a use of equipment, in the terms of Article 4(1)(c) of Directive
95/46, the temporary storage of the information indexed by internet search engines? If the
answer to that question is affirmative, can it be considered that that connecting factor is
present when the undertaking refuses to disclose the place where it stores those indexes,
invoking reasons of competition?
(d) Regardless of the answers to the foregoing questions and particularly in the event that the
Court … considers that the connecting factors referred to in Article 4 of [Directive 95/46]
are not present:
must Directive 95/46 … be applied, in the light of Article 8 of the [Charter], in the Member
State where the centre of gravity of the conflict is located and more effective protection of
the rights of … Union citizens is possible?
2. As regards the activity of search engines as providers of content in relation to Directive 95/46 …:
(a) in relation to the activity of [Google Search], as a provider of content, consisting in
locating information published or included on the net by third parties, indexing it
automatically, storing it temporarily and finally making it available to internet users
according to a particular order of preference, when that information contains personal data
of third parties: must an activity like the one described be interpreted as falling within the
concept of “processing of … data” used in Article 2(b) of Directive 95/46?
(b) If the answer to the foregoing question is affirmative, and once again in relation to an
activity like the one described:
must Article 2(d) of Directive 95/46 be interpreted as meaning that the undertaking
managing [Google Search] is to be regarded as the “controller” of the personal data
contained in the web pages that it indexes?
(c) In the event that the answer to the foregoing question is affirmative:
may the [AEPD], protecting the rights embodied in [Article] 12(b) and [subparagraph (a) of
the first paragraph of Article 14] of Directive 95/46, directly impose on [Google Search] a
requirement that it withdraw from its indexes an item of information published by third
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