CNIL, France's data regulator, has officially stated that Google may find itself facing sanctions if it fails to comply with last year's ruling of the European Court of Justice within the stipulated 15-day time frame.
Last year, a ruling by the Court of Justice allowed people to file a request to Google to remove certain information about them that could be searched and come up in search engine results. This data deletion is only applicable to European sites and only information from searches done using European sites is deleted.
An application for removal could be submitted to Google related to any data deemed outdated, irrelevant or harmful. Since 2014, when the ruling entered into effect, Google is believed to have processed over a million of these applications and refused those which it considered to have no merit.
CNIL has stated that following this ruling, it received "hundreds" of complaints from European citizens arguing that Google had not deleted the requested information and CNIL feels that in certain cases, Google should have complied and delisted the information. The data regulator further stated that if Google does not comply in these instances, it will move on to file a report against Google what could potentially lead to Google being sanctioned.
According to CNIL, the complaints in questions related to requests for data removal from all Google search indexes, not just those linked to member states, however Google turned down this request.
In its turn, Google stated that the right to be forgotten focused on services for Europeans and therefore this dictates the approach that Google is taking to uphold it. Google has been working hard and cooperating with data protection authorities in order to implement the Court of Justice's ruling.
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