In the case of Hurbain v. Belgium the Court held that there had been no violation of the freedom of expression.

The applicant in this case complained about a civil judgment against him, in his capacity as publisher of the daily newspaper Le Soir, ordering him to anonymise an article in its electronic archive which mentioned the full name of a driver who had been responsible for a deadly road accident in 1994. The driver, who had been rehabilitated after serving his sentence, had brought an action before the Belgian courts seeking the anonymisation of the article, which was easy to find via several search engines just by entering his name.

• Press release
• Delivery of the judgment 04/07/2023
• Webcast of hearing: 09/03/22
• Country profile – Belgium