Old Polish newspaper articles and the right to be forgotten

Annickpi — Thu Nov 05, 2026 3:23 am

Author: Annickpi

Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2026 3:23 am

Genealogy research has a flip side: the digitised archives that help us find ancestors also keep living people's minor troubles searchable for years. A cousin asked me how to deal with a local news item that still comes up under her name.

The publisher and Google are two separate routes. You can ask the paper to anonymise the name, add an update or stop the page being indexed, which is far more likely than outright deletion. Separately, Google's EU delisting form lets you ask it to stop showing the page for searches on your name. In Poland, the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) said in 2025 that GDPR Article 17 can support a demand for removal from digital press archives.

A summary of the case law across several countries is here: https://netclearer.eu/delist-from-google/old-news-articles/

Has anyone here asked a Polish publisher to anonymise an old article?

PolishOrigins(TM) Forum

Old Polish newspaper articles and the right to be forgotten