BIANCARDI v. ITALY JUDGMENT 37. The Government added that the restriction in question had been prescribed by law – namely, Legislative Decree no. 196/2003, which clearly stated that the maintenance of personal data was subject to the continuing existence of the objective that had initially justified their collection and storage. The aim of journalism – namely, to contribute to public debate on matters of social, political and economic interest – should be deemed to be ongoing whenever the knowledge of certain events was still relevant to public discussion. In that regard, the Government submitted that the article had remained on the website of the online newspaper for a substantial period of time. Indeed, no information about the progress of the related criminal proceedings had been provided in the article, which had simply recounted the material events. 38. The Government emphasised that the fact that the applicant had been found guilty had been a consequence of the failure to de-index from the Internet search engine the tags to the article published by the applicant (which would have prevented anyone accessing the article by means of simply typing out the name of V.X. or of his restaurant). In other words, the decisions of the Italian courts had stated that the applicant should have deindexed the article’s content, thereby making it more likely that only people who were genuinely interested in learning the facts of the matter in question would come across the article. However, the applicant had not been obliged actually to remove the article in question from the Internet archives. 39. Contrary to what the applicant had stated in his observations, the Government submitted that the obligation to de-index material could be imposed not only on Internet search engine providers, but also on the administrators of newspaper or journalistic archives accessible through the Internet. (c) Third-party interveners (i) Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 40. This intervener reiterated that the “right to be forgotten”, as recognised by the CJEU in Google Spain and Google and as stipulated by the GDPR (see, respectively, paragraphs 19 et seq. and 28 et seq. above) is aimed at providing users with the ability to request that search engines delist or de-index the results of searches conducted on the basis of a person’s name. Within the Convention system, this right has to be weighed against the right to freedom of expression and the right to publish information – in particular when it would result in the permanent removal of news articles published by the press (see Węgrzynowski and Smolczewski v. Poland, no. 33846/07, 16 July 2013). 41. This third-party intervener also pointed out the essential role played by the press in a democratic society, including through media websites and its establishment of digital archives. It also pointed out that the Court had 15