HURBAIN v. BELGIUM JUDGMENT replace G.’s first name and surname by the letter X in the digital version of the article featured on the newspaper’s website and in any other database for which he was responsible. The applicant was ordered to pay one euro to G. in respect of non-pecuniary damage and to pay G.’s costs. The court rejected G.’s requests for an anonymised version of the judgment to be sent to the parties and to possible third parties and for the judgment to be declared immediately enforceable. 22. The applicant appealed. 23. In his written pleadings the applicant submitted, among other arguments, that the way in which the database of the newspaper Le Soir worked meant that it was not possible to amend archived articles and hence to replace G.’s name with the letter X. Furthermore, the noindex tags that might have prevented the article from being indexed by external search engines were technical tools that were liable to lead to problems on the website concerned and were provided by the operators of those search engines, which required users to open an account. He therefore opposed such a measure. Lastly, the applicant pointed out that the Court of Justice of the European Union (“the CJEU”) had previously ruled that measures requiring electronic communications to be filtered or blocked had to have a domestic legal basis that was accessible, clear and foreseeable; in his view, no such basis had existed in the present case. 24. In his summarised observations to the Court of Appeal, G. requested that the first-instance judgment be upheld. 25. In a judgment of 25 September 2014 the Liège Court of Appeal upheld the first-instance judgment in its entirety. The Court of Appeal began by noting expressly that each of the parties had fundamental rights – the right to freedom of expression in the applicant’s case and the right to respect for private and family life in G.’s case – which were guaranteed by national and international standards, but which were not absolute and were of equal ranking. It referred in its reasoning to Articles 8 and 10 of the Convention. 26. As to the criterion of lawfulness required in order to derogate from the principle of freedom of expression, the Court of Appeal noted that the “right to be forgotten” was considered by the domestic case-law and the legal literature to be an integral part of the right to respect for private life as enshrined in Article 8 of the Convention, Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 22 of the Constitution. That was sufficient to satisfy the lawfulness test in order to derogate from the principle of freedom of expression. The Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant’s argument that Article 1382 of the Civil Code did not provide a clear and foreseeable legal basis. The provision in question constituted the ordinary rules on liability and was applicable to news outlets, which could not be unaware that they might be held liable if the exercise of press freedom caused damage resulting from an infringement of the rights of others. As the Court of First Instance had observed, Articles 1382 et seq. of the Civil Code, 8

Seleccionar párrafo de destino3