The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has found that an employee’s right to private life and correspondence was breached by monitoring of his electronic communications by his employer.
A Romanian engineer was dismissed in 2007 for exchanging personal messages with his fiancée on his professional Yahoo Messenger account. The company’s rules prohibited private use of online accounts. The employee, Mr Bărbulescu, appealed to the Romanian courts and the European Court of Human Rights arguing that the messages should be protected by his rights under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR held that the employer had a legitimate right to monitor the messages to verify that the account was only being used for professional purposes.
On appeal, however, the Grand Chamber concluded that the national authorities had not adequately protected Bărbulescu’s right to privacy. The Court stated that the national courts had failed to determine whether Bărbulescu had received prior notice from his employer of the possibility that his communications might be monitored; nor had they had regard either to the fact that he had not been informed of the nature or the extent of the monitoring, or the degree of intrusion into his private life and correspondence.
The Court reasoned that the national courts had failed to determine, firstly, the specific reasons justifying the introduction of the monitoring measures; secondly, whether the employer could have used measures entailing less intrusion into Bărbulescu’s private life and correspondence; and thirdly, whether the communications might have been accessed without his knowledge.
Ultimately it was held that the national courts had consequently failed to strike a fair balance between the interests at stake, Mr. Bărbulescu’s right to a private life and his employer’s right to ensure he was following work rules. This will have repercussions for employers who will have to give more explicit warnings to staff if they want to monitor internet use.
Click here for the decision in Bărbulescu v. Romania
Click here for a previous Bulletin article on the ECtHR case.