European privacy regulators have agreed on criteria for judging appeals for the so-called "right to be forgotten", for when search engines such as Google turn down requests to have information deleted from search results.

The Article 29 Working Party (WP29) of EU data protection authorities aims to bring clarity to implementing a landmark Court of Justice decision in May that gave Europeans the right to ask search engines to erase inaccurate or out-of-date information about themselves from search results.

The guidelines, due to be finalised by the end of November, will set out categories for organising the types of appeals coming in from citizens and create a common record of decisions taken by regulators. This will help regulators determine whether the information should remain accessible under the individual’s name by asking them to weigh factors such as the public role of the person, whether the information relates to a crime and how old it is.

Appeals

A contact person at each data protection authority will ensure that appeals are handled consistently across the EU’s 28 member states, the statement from the WP29 said.

About 90 such appeals have been filed with privacy regulators in Britain, 70 in Spain, 20 in France and 17 in Ireland.

In a statement issued after their plenary meeting in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, the regulators made no mention of two controversial issues: whether search engines ought to inform publishers when articles have been delisted from search results; and whether links ought to be removed from all versions of Google.

The working party members also met media companies to gather their views on how to strike a balance between the freedom of information and privacy. In July they met search engine companies Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Google says it has received more than 120,000 requests from across Europe to remove from its search results everything from criminal records and embarrassing photos to negative press stories. – (Additional reporting: Reuters)