Article 17 - Right to erasure (‘right to be forgotten’)
4 pending referralsReferral C-730/25 (Vinted, 17 Nov 2025) 
Referral C-12/25 (Bisdom Gent, 9 Jan 2025)
Referral C-484/24 (NTH Haustechnik, 10 Jul 2024)
Referral C-312/24 (Darashev, 29 Apr 2024)
10 preliminary rulings
Judgment of 4 Sep 2025, C-655/23 (Quirin Privatbank)
The provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), must be interpreted as not providing, for the data subject concerned by the unlawful processing of personal data, in the event that that data subject does not request that his or her data be erased, a judicial remedy enabling him or her to obtain, as a preventive measure, an order that the controller refrain from carrying out further unlawful processing in the future. However, those provisions do not prevent Member States from providing for such a remedy in their respective legal systems.
Judgment of 14 Mar 2024, C-46/23 (Újpest Polgármesteri Hivatala)
Article 58(2)(d) and (g) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), must be interpreted as meaning that the supervisory authority of a Member State is entitled, in the exercise of its corrective powers foreseen under those provisions, to order the controller or processor to erase unlawfully processed personal data, even though no request to that end has been made by the data subject with a view to exercising his or her rights pursuant to Article 17(1) of that regulation.
Judgment of 7 Dec 2023, C-26/22 (SCHUFA Holding)
Article 17(1)(c) of Regulation 2016/679 must be interpreted as meaning that the data subject has the right to obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her without undue delay where he or she objects to the processing pursuant to Article 21(1) of that regulation and there are no overriding legitimate grounds capable of justifying, exceptionally, the processing in question.
Article 17(1)(d) of Regulation 2016/679 must be interpreted as meaning that the controller is required to erase unlawfully processed personal data as soon as possible.
Judgment of 4 May 2023, C-60/22 (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)
Article 17(1)(d) and Article 18(1)(b) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) must be interpreted as meaning that failure by the controller to comply with the obligations laid down in Articles 26 and 30 of that regulation, which relate, respectively, to the conclusion of an arrangement determining joint responsibility for processing and to the maintenance of a record of processing activities, does not constitute unlawful processing conferring on the data subject a right to erasure or restriction of processing, where such a failure does not, as such, entail an infringement by the controller of the principle of ‘accountability’ as set out in Article 5(2) of that regulation, read in conjunction with Article 5(1)(a) and the first subparagraph of Article 6(1) thereof.
Judgment of 8 Dec 2022, C-460/20 (Google)
Article 17(3)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), must be interpreted as meaning that within the context of the weighing-up exercise which is to be undertaken between the rights referred to in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, on the one hand, and those referred to in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, on the other hand, for the purposes of examining a request for de-referencing made to the operator of a search engine seeking the removal of a link to content containing claims which the person who submitted the request regards as inaccurate from the list of search results, that de-referencing is not subject to the condition that the question of the accuracy of the referenced content has been resolved, at least provisionally, in an action brought by that person against the content provider.
Judgment of 27 Oct 2022, C-129/21 (Proximus)
Article 17 of Regulation 2016/679 must be interpreted as meaning that the request by a subscriber to have his or her personal data withdrawn from publicly available telephone directories and directory enquiry services constitutes making use of the ‘right to erasure’ within the meaning of that article.
Article 17(2) of Regulation 2016/679 must be interpreted as not precluding a national supervisory authority from ordering a provider of publicly available telephone directories and directory enquiry services – which has been requested by the subscriber of a telephone service operator to cease disclosing personal data relating to him or her – to take ‘reasonable steps’, within the meaning of that provision, to inform search engine providers of that request for erasure of the data.
Judgment of 24 Sep 2019, C-507/17 (Google)
On a proper construction of Article 12(b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and of Article 17(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and repealing Directive 95/46 (General Data Protection Regulation), where a search engine operator grants a request for de-referencing pursuant to those provisions, that operator is not required to carry out that de-referencing on all versions of its search engine, but on the versions of that search engine corresponding to all the Member States, using, where necessary, measures which, while meeting the legal requirements, effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage an internet user conducting a search from one of the Member States on the basis of a data subject’s name from gaining access, via the list of results displayed following that search, to the links which are the subject of that request.
Judgment of 24 Sep 2019, C-136/17 (GC and Others)
The provisions of Article 8(1) and (5) of Directive 95/46 must be interpreted as meaning that the operator of a search engine is in principle required by those provisions, subject to the exceptions provided for by the directive, to accede to requests for de-referencing in relation to links to web pages containing personal data falling within the special categories referred to by those provisions. Article 8(2)(e) of Directive 95/46 must be interpreted as meaning that, pursuant to that article, such an operator may refuse to accede to a request for de-referencing if he establishes that the links at issue lead to content comprising personal data falling within the special categories referred to in Article 8(1) but whose processing is covered by the exception in Article 8(2)(e) of the directive, provided that the processing satisfies all the other conditions of lawfulness laid down by the directive, and unless the data subject has the right under Article 14(a) of the directive to object to that processing on compelling legitimate grounds relating to his particular situation. The provisions of Directive 95/46 must be interpreted as meaning that, where the operator of a search engine has received a request for de-referencing relating to a link to a web page on which personal data falling within the special categories referred to in Article 8(1) or (5) of Directive 95/46 are published, the operator must, on the basis of all the relevant factors of the particular case and taking into account the seriousness of the interference with the data subject’s fundamental rights to privacy and protection of personal data laid down in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, ascertain, having regard to the reasons of substantial public interest referred to in Article 8(4) of the directive and in compliance with the conditions laid down in that provision, whether the inclusion of that link in the list of results displayed following a search on the basis of the data subject’s name is strictly necessary for protecting the freedom of information of internet users potentially interested in accessing that web page by means of such a search, protected by Article 11 of the Charter.
Judgment of 9 Mar 2017, C-398/15 (Manni)
Article 6(1)(e), Article 12(b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, read in conjunction with Article 3 of the First Council Directive 68/151/EEC of 9 March 1968 on co-ordination of safeguards which, for the protection of the interests of members and others, are required by Member States of companies within the meaning of the second paragraph of Article 58 of the Treaty, with a view to making such safeguards equivalent throughout the Community, as amended by Directive 2003/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 July 2003, must be interpreted as meaning that, as EU law currently stands, it is for the Member States to determine whether the natural persons referred to in Article 2(1)(d) and (j) of that directive may apply to the authority responsible for keeping, respectively, the central register, commercial register or companies register to determine, on the basis of a case-by-case assessment, if it is exceptionally justified, on compelling legitimate grounds relating to their particular situation, to limit, on the expiry of a sufficiently long period after the dissolution of the company concerned, access to personal data relating to them, entered in that register, to third parties who can demonstrate a specific interest in consulting that data.
Judgment of 13 May 2014, C-131/12 (Google Spain and Google)
Article 12 (b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46 are to be interpreted as meaning that, in order to comply with the rights laid down in those provisions and in so far as the conditions laid down by those provisions are in fact satisfied, the operator of a search engine is obliged to remove from the list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of a person’s name links to web pages, published by third parties and containing information relating to that person, also in a case where that name or information is not erased beforehand or simultaneously from those web pages, and even, as the case may be, when its publication in itself on those pages is lawful.
Article 12(b) and subparagraph (a) of the first paragraph of Article 14 of Directive 95/46 are to be interpreted as meaning that, when appraising the conditions for the application of those provisions, it should inter alia be examined whether the data subject has a right that the information in question relating to him personally should, at this point in time, no longer be linked to his name by a list of results displayed following a search made on the basis of his name, without it being necessary in order to find such a right that the inclusion of the information in question in that list causes prejudice to the data subject. As the data subject may, in the light of his fundamental rights under Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, request that the information in question no longer be made available to the general public on account of its inclusion in such a list of results, those rights override, as a rule, not only the economic interest of the operator of the search engine but also the interest of the general public in having access to that information upon a search relating to the data subject’s name. However, that would not be the case if it appeared, for particular reasons, such as the role played by the data subject in public life, that the interference with his fundamental rights is justified by the preponderant interest of the general public in having, on account of its inclusion in the list of results, access to the information in question.
