BIANCARDI v. ITALY JUDGMENT rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.” A. Admissibility 31. The Court notes that the application is neither manifestly ill-founded nor inadmissible on any other grounds listed in Article 35 of the Convention. It must therefore be declared admissible. B. Merits 1. The parties’ submissions (a) The applicant 32. The applicant pointed out that the criminal proceedings instituted against V.X. had still been pending at the date on which the Supreme Court’s judgment had been issued in respect of his case. Therefore, it could not be said that the period of time during which the information had remained published was excessive. Thus, V.X.’s “right to be forgotten” had never existed in the first place. 33. The applicant submitted that the domestic authorities had not taken into account Article 99 of Legislative Decree no. 196/2003, which provided that the processing of personal data for, inter alia, “historical research purposes” (scopi storici) could be carried out upon the expiry of the period allowed for achieving the different purposes for which the data had originally been collected and processed. He also referred to Articles 136 and 139 of the same decree and to the above-mentioned code of ethics, which contained specific provisions regarding the protection of journalists’ freedom of expression. 34. The applicant further submitted that he had been unjustly held liable for not having erased the article in question, since only the search engine provider (that is to say, Google Italy) had been technically capable of delisting the article in question. 35. The applicant also pointed out that, in cases similar to the present one, the balance between the protection of individuals’ reputation under Article 8 and the freedom of expression provided by Article 10 had been easily secured by simply requiring the publications concerned to publish supplementary information or clarifications to the articles in question. (b) The Government 36. The Government submitted that an adequate balance between the applicant’s freedom of expression and the right of V.X. and his restaurant to respect for his private life (and the reputation of both) had been achieved in the instant case. 14

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