BERLIN — In a victory for Google Inc., the European Union’s highest court received a recommendation Tuesday to strike down a Spanish regulator’s demand that the search engine company grant citizens abroad the digital “right to be forgotten,” including the ability to delete arrest records and other negative publicity from Google’s online search results.

An expert opinion requested by the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, recommended that Google not be required to expunge all links to a 15-year-old legal notice documenting a Spanish man’s failure to pay back taxes.

The recommendation of the court’s advocate general, Niilo Jaaskinen, who acted as an official fact-finder for the panel, could inform the debate in the European Parliament over updating Europe’s 1995 data protection law, which was adopted at the dawn of the Internet broadband era. A proposal before the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the European Union’s upper legislative chamber, would give residents of the 27-nation bloc broader control over the display of personal information, including the digital “right to be forgotten.”