Harmonising the Enforcement of the Right to Be Forgotten: Navigating New Speech Regulation Challenges in the EU

The ‘right to be forgotten’ fully contributes to shaping the kind of digital environment that the EU is trying to build. By requiring intermediaries such as search engine operators to determine whether to take down flagged content considering European standards, the EU has created a ‘new-school speech regulation’ tool, which operates synergistically with the Digital Services Act. Therefore, instead of revisiting debates on the right’s merits, the paper intends to shed light on an aspect overlooked by the legal literature: how the right is concretely enforced against search engine operators and social network companies. Such an investigation will illuminate the issues the EU faces in overseeing intermediaries’ speech regulating activities. The EU must address two main challenges: achieving effective and consistent enforcement across the EU and overcoming new issues due to the lack of judicial courts’ involvement when the right is applied in defamation cases. Those challenges directly impact the relationship between the EU and the Member States, placing Data Protection Authorities in a delicate position. Harmonising the enforcement of the right to be forgotten is nevertheless crucial. With its implementation, the EU tackles critical issues: ensuring that States retain control over how speech is regulated rather than ceding regulatory authority to private entities and creating a distinctive online environment to foster European integration. Keywords: right to be forgotten; GDPR enforcement; speech regulation; content moderation; oversight