The central part of the diploma thesis presents an analysis of the case 61496/08 Barbulescu v. Romania from the European Court of Human Rights. Romanian citizen Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu was fired from the post of sales engineer by his employer because he was using work electronic mail during business hours for personal purposes. After unsuccessful attempts to challenge the termination of employment in national courts, Barbulescu appealed to the ECtHR, arguing that his right to respect for private life, home and correspondence under the Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights has been violated by his employer with an unjustified control and access to the content of correspondence. The Small Chamber did not find a violation of the Article 8 of the ECHR, however, it did not in fact evaluate admissibility of actions of both the employee and his employer. The Small Chamber only evaluated whether the Romanian courts had done everything in their power during the proceedings to adequately protect the plaintiff’s rights in the context of disciplinary proceedings, the most severe of which was the termination of employment. The shift happened before the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR, which ruled that it was impossible to completely exclude private life from an individual, even in the workplace, thus recognizing a violation of the Article 8 of the ECHR. We have found that an employer can control employee’s electronic mail only if they have a valid and legitimate reason and if they inform the employee in advance, and can read the content of personal messages in exceptional cases, usually with a court order. With this case, the ECtHR has set stricter criteria for the Member States in weighing between employee’s interest in expectation of workplace privacy and employer’s interest in checking the use of office equipment and checking employee productivity. Contribution of the diploma thesis is primarily to formulate recommendations for employers regarding the control of office communication equipment and electronic mail of employers, and to underline the fact that there is a very thin line between working and private life in the workplace.
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