by

Judge/ Yassin Abdalla Abdelkarim

CyJurII Founder and Director

on 11 October 2026

Citation: ECHR, Grand Chamber, no. 57292/16, 4 July 2023

 1. Facts and procedural history

In November 1994, Le Soir reported a fatal road accident caused by a drunk driver, G.,a physician, who killed two people and injured others. G. was convicted in 2000 and rehabilitated in 2006. In 2008 , the newspaper digitized its archive, and from 2010 the article was freely accessible online with G.'s full name.

G. requested anonymity and, after his request was refused, commenced legal proceedings. The Belgian courts ordered the publisher, Mr Hurbain, to anonymize the online version of the article, a decision upheld by the Court of Cassation in 2016. The original 1994 article was never found to be unlawful. In 2021, the Chamber found no violation of Article 10, and the Grand Chamber confirmed that conclusion in 2023.

2. The legal question

The case concerns a conflict between two Convention rights: the press’s freedom under Article 10 to publish and maintain archives, and G.’s right under Article 8 to respect for his reputation and private life, including a “right to be forgotten”.

The Court framed the dispute narrowly. It concerned the continued, unrestricted online availability of an article identifying G. in connection with an event that had occurred many years earlier, rather than the lawfulness of the original publication. To balance the competing rights, the Court applied the framework established in Axel Springer and Von Hannover (No. 2), 39954/08, 7 February 2012 adapted to the context of digital archives.

3. The Court’s reasoning

Recognition of the archive function

The Court affirmed the significant role of internet archives in preserving news and ensuring its continued accessibility, building on Times Newspapers v. UK, Times Newspapers Ltd v. the United Kingdom (nos 1 and 2), nos. 3002/03 and 23676/03, § 27, ECHR 2009 (2009) and Węgrzynowski and Smolczewski v. Poland,Węgrzynowski and Smolczewski v. Poland, no 33846/07, 16 July 2013. It also acknowledged that altering archived content constitutes a serious interference with freedom of expression, as Article 10 protects the integrity of press archives.

 The right to be forgotten as an aspect of Article 8

The Court treated the “right to be forgotten” as an aspect of the protection of private life under Article 8, rather than as a freestanding right. It considered how the passage of time, together with the permanence and searchability of online information, affects that protection.

Seven criteria

The Court's main contribution is a non-exhaustive list of factors for balancing in this context:

1. the nature of the archived information;

2. the time elapsed since the events and since the first online publication;

3. the contemporary interest of the information;

4. whether the person claiming the right has a public profile and how he has behaved since the events;

5. the negative repercussions of continued availability;

6. the degree of accessibility of the information in the digital archives (free or restricted);

7. the impact of the measure on press freedom.

Application

Applying these factors, the Court emphasized that:

•   G. was a private individual with no public role.

•   The events had no continuing topical or historical significance, and G.'s identity was not essential to the article's informational value.

•   G. had been convicted and rehabilitated, and the continued association with the accident harmed him professionally and personally.

•   The article had been freely available for years and was easy to find through name searches.

•   The Belgian courts had weighed these factors carefully and given adequate reasons.

The Court accepted that anonymization was a sufficiently narrow measure: the paper archive remained intact, the article stayed online, and only G.'s identity was removed. It also noted that alternatives such as de-indexing had been considered and found inadequate by the national courts, since a name search on the newspaper's own site would still surface the article.

4. Significance

First, the Court extended its right-to-be-forgotten reasoning to the press itself. Earlier case law concerned either the original publication (M.L. and W.W. v. Germany, M.L. and W.W. v. Germany, nos. 60798/10 and 65599/10, 28 June 2018), where anonymization was refused) or intermediaries. Here the Court recognized that a publisher may have duties regarding its own archive, while stressing that those duties are more limited than for search engines.

Second, the judgment offers a structured test where previously there was a patchwork of national approaches. The seven criteria give national courts a framework and promote convergence, including with the CJEU's reasoning in Google Spain and GDPR Article 17.

Third, it confirms that press archives are protected but not immune. The Court's insistence that the original article remained lawful, together with its limited remedy, is an attempt to preserve both archive integrity and individual dignity.

5. Critique

Chilling effect. Critics argue that a duty to assess archive content on request pushes publishers towards pre-emptive self-censorship or costly case-by-case review. The Court tried to limit this by requiring a "sufficiently serious" interest and an ex post, request-based process, but the practical burden on smaller outlets is real.

Rewriting history. Even a narrow anonymization changes the historical record. The Court's answer, that identity was non-essential and the paper record survives, is persuasive on these facts but offers less comfort where an individual's identity is historically relevant, for example in research on professional or institutional misconduct.

Uncertainty of the criteria. The factors are open-ended, and the Court gave little guidance on weighting. How should "time elapsed" interact with the seriousness of the offence, or with the person's subsequent public role? Outcomes may therefore vary across jurisdictions despite the common framework.

Margin of appreciation. The Court's deference to the Belgian courts' balancing, with its "strong reasons" threshold for substituting its own view, may leave some states with generous scope to order anonymisation. The Court's own scrutiny remains, but the intensity of review is arguably lighter than in cases directly concerning political speech.

Less intrusive remedies. One could ask whether a contextual notice or an update (as in Węgrzynowski) would have protected G. sufficiently. The Court's acceptance that the national courts found such remedies inadequate reads as fact-sensitive rather than a general rule.

6. Conclusion

Hurbain is best read as a calibrated, fact-specific judgment. It does not create a general right to erase lawful journalism; it confirms that, for private individuals whose connection to long-past events has lost public interest, courts may order proportionate changes to the online archive without violating Article 10. Its lasting value lies in the seven-factor test, which will shape both national case law and platform and newsroom practice. Whether that test yields predictability or merely a vocabulary for discretion will become clear only through subsequent decisions.