Court case 2020/AR/1111 – Court Ruling (Belgium, 2021)

The complainant, an executive at an unnamed large company, had requested the removal of 12 URLs. As Google had refused to remove several of the concerned links, the complainant referred the case to the Belgian DPA. Building on the principles developed by the CJEU in the Google Spain and Google/CNIL cases, the Belgian DPA decided that Google Belgium is an establishment of Google LLC , triggering the applicability of the GDPR under article 3.1. Moreover, the DPA referred to a latter sent on 23 June 2020 by Google LLC to the Irish DPC stating it would no longer object to local (non-lead) supervisory authorities exercising local data protection jurisdiction when it comes to the scope of Google LLC's responsibilities. As a result, despite the designation of the Irish DPC as lead supervisory authority, the Belgian DPA considered it had jurisdiction because the case did not relate to Google Ireland Ltd's processing activities, but to Google LLC. Therefore, the one-stop-shop procedure did not apply. On these grounds, the Belgian DPA: * ordered Google Belgium to de-reference the concerned search results; * imposed an administrative fines of EUR600,000, based on Alphabet's (Google's mother company) annual turnover in the three previous years; and * ordered Google to clarify the ambiguity concerning the roles of the different entities involved, and in particular to clearly and precisely clarify which entity is the data controller for Belgium and for which processing activity. Google Belgium appealed the decisions before the Court of appeal on the grounds that - the order was addressed to Google Belgium which is not the controller in this case * the APD did not sufficiently motivate how it could be established that Google Belgium was linked to the activities of Google LCC as the controller; * Article 58 GDPR does not provide the possibility to impose a corrective measure on another entity than the controller (ie Google LLC); * the APD published the decision without removin