The EU's top court is considering whether Google must comply with Europe's "right to be forgotten" policy on a global scale. France's highest administrative court, the Council of State, referred the case to the European Court of Justice on Wednesday.
Google has been working with European authorities to implement the policy since 2014, when the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that Europeans can ask any search engine to remove some results returned by searching for a person's name.
However, Google initially removed the results from its European sites, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent for interfering with search results in countries that had different laws.
France's data protection authority, the CNIL, later told Google that the deletion should remove results from all domains, including those located outside Europe and from Google.com.
Google attempted to appease regulators in early 2016 when it began cleaning up its listings – across all its domains – when investigations began to be conducted by the country where the delisting request originated.
However, the CNIL imposed a €100,000 fine on Google last year, prompting the company to appeal to the Council of State. Now, the matter is before the ECJ.
“Since 2014, we have worked hard to implement the decision,” said Peter Fleischer, Google’s chief privacy officer.
"We defend the idea that every country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way it chooses, not the way another country chooses.".
A similar case was in Canada, where the highest court ruled against Google: Last month, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld an order ordering Google to remove a company's website globally.
While the EU case is pending, Google is reportedly taking other steps to comply with Europe’s stricter privacy laws. Last week, when it opened its new Google Cloud Platform in London, the company reaffirmed its commitment to EU data protection requirements, including the “right to be forgotten” for those who wish to do so.
