The government is at least in theory acting on behalf of the people, and European countries have long had fairly strong privacy rights that actually means something.
When that right collides with the publication of information the court needs to weigh how to best protect public interest.
In this case the court decided that privacy rights for information that is not in itself in the public interest outweighs the interest of making the information easily searchable.
What exactly constitute the privacy rights for information that is already public?
I argue that an act that is reported in a newspaper does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and as a result that the right to be forgotten is distinct from the right to privacy.
More particularly, the concept of public interest is static neither in time nor is it equal across all citizens, but rights are by definition equal across all citizens. A rule that always applies except for when it doesn't is really just a venue for arbitrary decisionmaking.
