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PARIS (Reuters) - EU judges will have to decide whether Alphabet's Google has to remove certain web search results globally to comply with a previous privacy ruling after France's supreme administrative court referred the issue to the top EU court.

Google has gone head to head with CNIL, the French data protection authority, over the territorial scope of the so-called "right to be forgotten", which requires the world's biggest search engine to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results under searches for people's names.

Having been fined 100,000 euros ($115,000) by CNIL in March 2016 for not delisting across national borders, Google appealed to France's supreme administrative court, the Council of State, which on Wednesday passed the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ).

The tech giant has argued that a balance should be found between the right to privacy and freedom of expression, saying that such removals should not go beyond Europe and into countries with different laws on the subject.

French regulator CNIL, however, says that the removals must be global to uphold Europeans' right to privacy because experienced Internet users can circumvent the Google domestic domain where the delisting takes place.

"With today's decision, the Council of State believes that the scope of the right to be delisted poses several serious difficulties of the interpretation of European Union law," the French court said.

The dispute arose after the ECJ ruled in 2014 that search engines such as Google and Microsoft's Bing comply with the "right to be forgotten". Though Google did so, it only scrubbed results across its European websites such as Google.de in Germany and Google.fr in France, arguing that to do otherwise would set a dangerous precedent on the territorial reach of national laws.

Since 2014, weve worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten ruling thoughtfully and comprehensively in Europe," Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said in a written statement.

"Weve been defending the idea that each country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way that it chooses, not in the way that another country chooses."

The CNIL declined to comment.

Last year Google also started delisting results across all its domains -- including Google.com -- when accessed from the country where the request came from.

Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain in Paris and Julia Fioretti in Brussels; Editing by David Goodman

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French court refers 'right to be forgotten' dispute to top EU court - Reuters

Support is growing for a second European Union referendum once the final terms of the Brexit deal are clear, according to a new poll that suggests a third of the public now back the proposition.

The survey by ICM pollsters for the Guardian found that momentum is growing around idea of a second referendum advocated by the Liberal Democrats and the Green party to hold another vote in two years time when ministers present the final deal on Britains exit to the public.

When respondents were provided with the statement a second referendum to allow people to decide whether the UK leaves or not, based on the outcome of the negotiations, 32 per cent said they agreed a six point increase on the same survey six months ago.

But enthusiasts of a second referendum still have some way to go in convincing the majority, the poll also suggests, with 46 per cent of respondents agreeing that the UK should leave the bloc regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

The poll came after David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, entered the second round of negotiations in Brussels but was criticised for taking part in less than a hour of discussions with Michel Barnier, the EUs chief negotiator. Shortly after declaring it was time to get back to work, Mr Davis had returned to London.

According to the results, more people also believed Brexit would have a negative rather than positive impact on the British economy, with 42 per cent and 29 per cent respectively. Despite this, the poll also found that more people were likely to feel joy as opposed to despair when Britain eventually leaves the bloc in March 2019.

On Friday, Tony Blair, the former Labour Prime Minister, admitted there was currently no groundswell for a second referendum on membership of the EU but said it is still entirely possible for the will of the British people to change as the economic effects of a hard Brexit become more apparent.

In an eight-page article on Brexit, Mr Blair also urged politicians to include the option of negotiating for Britain to stay within a Europe itself prepared to reform and meet us halfway on the free movement of people.

Describing Britains exit from the European Union as the biggest political decision since the Second World War, he added: Given what is at stake, and what, daily we are discovering about the costs of Brexit, how can it be right deliberately to take off the table the option of compromise between Britain and Europe so that Britain stays within a reformed Europe?

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Brexit: Support for a second EU referendum is growing, finds poll - The Independent

The European Union (EU) has signed a major ministerial declaration to bring together the blocs member states and combine their collective resources to realise the potential of 5G mobile networks across the EU, and make Europe a global leader in future mobile networking technology.

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Signed in Tallinn, Estonia, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, the declaration of intent sets out to establish a common baseline on 5G standards in Europe, and confirm the willingness of the blocs members to position Europe as a lead market.

Everybody and everything will be using 5G networks to communicate in the future, and I am very glad that we managed to sign the declaration, said Urve Palo, Estonian minister for entrepreneurship and IT.

This indicates that all member states are thinking about the future and are willing to boost connectivity and Europes digital competitiveness to the next level. 5G will allow faster internet connections across Europe and make it possible to develop new technologies, such as connected cars, innovative industrial machines and e-health initiatives, added Palo.

Current estimates hold that there will be 26 billion connected devices in use worldwide and 70% penetration of the worldwide population just three years from now, therefore Brussels wants 5G to form the backbone of its Digital Single Market strategy.

The declaration itself sets out a number of steps that EU members are committing to take around encouraging the fastest possible roll-out of 5G and related services. It stresses the need to create the right preconditions to help the technology meet its potential, including making more spectrum available and co-ordinating frequencies across borders.

5G ensures smooth and nearly independent connectivity not only for individual users, but also for various devices in different business sectors, said Estonias Palo.

The EU has previously set out a number of ambitions around 5G. During this years Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona, it released a report saying that taking a vertically focused approach to 5G would be extremely important. Its report identified a number of industries that will be well-placed to take advantage of 5G in various ways, including autonomous vehicles, healthcare and manufacturing.

In spite of this, there are some who still believe that whatever 5G ambitions are set out at the government level, Europe will inevitably lag somewhat behind extremely advanced economies such as Japan and South Korea.

A recent analyst report suggested this might be partly because European mobile operators feel the need to extract the maximum possible return on investment on existing 3G and 4G infrastructure.

Besides the 27 remaining EU member states, the declaration was also signed by Norway and the UK. The UK government has previously set out its own ambitions and strategy around 5G, and committed millions of pounds to fund the construction of some of the first pilot networks by leading academics in this country.

However, despite previous statements from Westminster insisting that purposefully excluding British industry and research from cross-EU efforts as a result of the 2016 vote to leave the bloc will not have a negative effect, the true impact of Brexit remains unknown.

See more here:
The European Union brings member states together to lead on 5G - ComputerWeekly.com

There were close to 23 million unemployed people ofworking age in the EU in 2015 but around 50 millionpeople in a broader category of labour slack,encompassing inactive people wishing to work andunderemployed, involuntary part-timers as well as theunemployed, according to a new report from Eurofound, the Dublin-based EU Agency.

The unemployment rate is an important andwell-publicised measure of labour market performance indeveloped market economies. It is currently high in the EUcompared with other developed countries and still wellabove its historical average nearly a decade after thebeginning of the global financial crisis.

But focusingexclusively on the unemployment rate fails to take accountof other numerically important manifestations of labourmarket slack -or simply labour slack.

Labour market slack is the shortfall between the volume of work desired by workers and the actual volume of work available.

The aim of this report is to develop a more nuanced estimate of labour slack using EU Labour Force Survey data, which allows involuntary part-timers and inactive people with some labour market attachment to be identified and quantified.

The most important indicator of labour slack is the unemployment rate, but an exclusive focus on this fails to take account of the four-fifths of the jobless population who are inactive rather than unemployed. Many people in this group have some form of labour market attachment they would like to work, are seeking work or are available to work. In addition, many part-time workers would like to work longer hours.

The authors calculate that there were around 50 million people in the broad category of labour slack in 2015 and that labour slack has been slower to fall in response to the recovery than unemployment.

Download the report:Estimating labour market slack in the European Union

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Estimating labour market slack in the European Union - EU News

The UK is readying itself to submit a crucial application to the World Trading Organisation (WTO) outlining how it intends to trade with the rest of the globe after Brexit.

And Londons case will be strengthened as the document is set to be a joint proposal alongside the European Union, which will need to amend its own membership terms after losing the worlds fifth biggest economy.

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According to sources in Brussels the EU and the UK are planning to put forward a combined dossier with their plans for the future to bosses at the WTO in the early Autumn.

Officials said securing a smooth transition from being a WTO member inside the EU to being one outside it is important to UK officials who are championing a vision of a Global Britain.

The UK is currently a member of the global trading bloc but has for the last 40 years given up its seat to the EU Commission, which represents the 28 member states in all trading matters.

And the EUs support for Britains rehabilitation as an individual member will come as a big boost to Downing Street, with some commentators predicting there could be a tricky legal road ahead.

Brexit supporters are likely to argue it shows that, despite some of the poisonous political rhetoric flying around, both sides have a deep interest in a mutually beneficial and pragmatic trading relationship in the future.

An EU source said: Currently we are in talks with the United Kingdom to come to a joint approach on the matter, on all the aspects of the divorce, with regard to the WTO."

They added: "And I would think that, come the month of September/October, we will be able to come jointly to the rest of the (WTO) membership.

The plan is [that] we would explain together how we would see the disentanglement of the United Kingdom from the EU commitments and schedules.

The joint approach would address aspects of the EUs WTO membership terms, known as its WTO schedules, that are not easily split between Britain and the other 27 EU members.

These would include thorny issues for the UK outside the EU including agricultural tariff quotas, agricultural subsidies and commitments on services trade.

Asked how important it was to finalise revision of the WTO terms of membership before the EU and Britain formally divorce, the source said: I have the impression that the United Kingdom believes that is important.

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Eurocrats are also keen to ensure that an agreement is in place between Britain and the EU over an ongoing trade dispute involving the European firm Airbus, which could result in a large fine.

The US is challenging the EU over billions of dollars of European support to the aircraft manufacturer, including from the UK Government, which they say breaches WTO rules on fair competition.

A smooth transition to full, independent WTO membership would be a major coup for Theresa May and leading Brexiteers and would help dispel doom-mongering amongst some Remain backing economists.

It would represent a major plank in the PMs vision for a Global Britain, which advocates replacing EU membership with a truly worldwide approach to trade and investment.

Read more:
Brexit progress: Britain set for brave new trading role...and EU is HELPING us achieve it - Express.co.uk