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 73

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