Costeja

Costeja refers to Mario Costeja González, a Spanish data subject whose 2014 legal challenge against Google Spain SL and Google Inc. produced a landmark ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In 1998, a newspaper article reported on a debt collection case involving Costeja, and he asked Google to remove links to that article from its search results, arguing that the information was outdated. The Spanish Data Protection Agency refused to order removal, and the case progressed to the ECJ.

The ECJ ruling, delivered on May 13, 2014, held that search engines operating in the European Union process personal data, and that individuals may request the delisting of search results linking to information about them if the data are inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant, or excessive in light of the purposes of the processing, and if the balancing with the public interest does not override the individual's privacy rights. The court also established that data controllers are subject to EU data protection rules, even when data are hosted outside the EU.

Impact: The decision is widely seen as recognizing a right to be forgotten in the EU, prompting search engines to implement delisting processes for EU users. The right was later reinforced and clarified by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), adopted in 2016 and enforced in 2018, under Article 17. The Costeja case remains central to debates on privacy, freedom of expression, and the global reach of national data protection regimes.