12/10/2019 CURIA - Documents 26 AF requested de-referencing of links leading to an article in the daily newspaper Libération of 9 September 2008, reproduced on the site of the Centre contre les manipulations mentales (Centre against mental manipulation) (CCMM) (France), concerning the suicide of a member of the Church of Scientology in December 2006. AF is mentioned in that article in his capacity as public relations officer of the Church of Scientology, an occupation which he has since ceased to exercise. Furthermore, the author of the article states that he contacted AF in order to obtain his version of the facts and describes the comments received on that occasion. 27 BH requested the de-referencing of links leading to articles, mainly in the press, concerning the judicial investigation opened in June 1995 into the funding of the Parti républicain (PR), in which he was questioned with a number of businessmen and political personalities. The proceedings against him were closed by an order discharging him on 26 February 2010. Most of the links are to articles contemporaneous with the opening of the investigation and therefore do not mention the outcome of the proceedings. 28 ED requested the de-referencing of links leading to two articles published in Nice Matin and Le Figaro reporting the criminal hearing during which he was sentenced to 7 years’ imprisonment and an additional penalty of 10 years’ social and judicial supervision for sexual assaults on children under the age of 15. One of the accounts of the court proceedings also mentions several intimate details relating to ED that were revealed at the hearing. 29 Following the rejections by Google of their requests for de-referencing, the applicants in the main proceedings brought complaints before the CNIL, seeking for Google to be ordered to de-reference the links in question. By letters dated 24 April 2015, 28 August 2015, 21 March 2016 and 9 May 2016 respectively, the president of the CNIL informed them that the procedures on their complaints had been closed. 30 The applicants in the main proceedings thereupon made applications to the referring court, the Conseil d’État (Council of State, France), against those refusals of the CNIL to serve formal notice on Google to carry out the de-referencing requested. The applications were joined by the referring court. 31 Finding that the applications raised several serious difficulties of interpretation of Directive 95/46, the Conseil d’État (Council of State) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling: ‘(1) (2) Having regard to the specific responsibilities, powers and capabilities of the operator of a search engine, does the prohibition imposed on other controllers of processing data caught by Article 8(1) and (5) of Directive 95/46, subject to the exceptions laid down there, also apply to this operator as the controller of processing by means of that search engine? If Question 1 should be answered in the affirmative: [(a)] Must Article 8(1) and (5) of Directive 95/46 be interpreted as meaning that the prohibition so imposed on the operator of a search engine of processing data covered by those provisions, subject to the exceptions laid down by that directive, would require the operator to grant as a matter of course the requests for de-referencing in relation to links to web pages concerning such data? [(b)] From that perspective, how must the exceptions laid down in Article 8(2)(a) and (e) of Directive 95/46 be interpreted, when they apply to the operator of a search engine, in the light of its specific responsibilities, powers and capabilities? In particular, may such an operator refuse a request for de-referencing, if it establishes that the links at issue lead to content which, although comprising data falling within the categories listed in Article 8(1), is also covered by the exceptions laid down by Article 8(2) of the directive, in particular points (a) and (e)? [(c)] Similarly, when the links subject to the request for de-referencing lead to processing of personal data carried out solely for journalistic purposes or for those of artistic or literary expression, on which basis, in accordance with Article 9 of Directive 95/46, data within the curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document_print.jsf?docid=218106&text=&dir=&doclang=EN&part=1&occ=first&mode=DOC&pageIndex=0&cid=2571804 9/19