AKI – Court Ruling (Estonia, 2025)

The data subject is a former entrepreneur who appeared in Estonian news articles, including tabloids, due to being photographed alongside celebrities and sharing such photos on social media. Among other thing, the data subject maintained a channel on the Youtube platform promoting their own products. The data subject filed a complaint with the Estonian DPA (AKI) on 29 April 2024 requesting an intervention for the erasure of personal data from a number of articles available online, published by several media outlets (the controllers). In addition, on 2 May 2024, the data subject filed a subsequent complaint with the DPA, asking for intervention for their request to Google (the controller) to de-index the same articles. The DPA rejected the complaints based on the findings that the processing of personal data in the published articles was lawful for journalistic purposes under Article 4 Estonian Personal Data Protection Act (IKS) since the data subject was a public figure and there was public interest in the information, including in the availability of archives. The data subject appealed the decision of the DPA to the Tallinn Administrative Court (Tallinna Halduskohus) seeking to have the DPA decision annulled and their complaint re-examined. The Court noted that the articles listed by the data subject in the two complaints made to the DPA overlapped and therefore decided to analyse them together. The Court found that the DPA had to weigh two rights against each other in reaching a conclusion regarding the complaint. On one hand, the continued publication of the articles containing the personal data of the data subject may infringe upon their right to privacy and the protection of personal data. On the other hand, the anonymisation of personal data in the articles may cause an infringement upon the right to freedom of expression and information. Firstly, the Court referred to the criteria used in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case of [https: