Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights delivered on January 12, 2016 on the case of Barbulescu v. Romania became subject of public discussions and different interpretations. Due to the importance of the issue at stake, the Office of Personal Data Protection Inspector studied the judgment in details and decided to provide interested persons with more information.

One of the private companies terminated the employment contract with Mr. Barbulescu for using Yahoo Messenger created for responding to clients’ requests for private purposes during working hours. Internal regulations of the company prohibited the use of company’s communication tools for private purposes during working hours.

During examining the case between Mr. Barbulescu and the company, Romanian Courts did not attach particular importance to the content of private communications and did not reveal the identity of persons with whom Mr. Barbulescu communicated. Therefore, the European Court of Human Rights found that content of communication did not carry a decisive role in the domestic courts’ findings. Furthermore, the Court took into account the fact that the employee could not justify the use of Yahoo Messenger for private purposes.

European Court found that Romania has stroke fair balance between inviolability of privacy and private interests of the employer, since the employer examined communications only on Yahoo Messenger and not the other documents that were stored on the employee’s computer. Therefore, the employer’s monitoring was limited in scope and proportionate.

This judgment is binding only to the parties of the case, in this instance – Romania. However, interpretation provided in the judgment is important for high contracting parties to the Convention, including Georgia.

Pursuant to the European Court of Human Rights, telephone calls from business premises, as well as e-mails sent from work are protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. If the employee is not warned that one’s calls would be liable to monitoring, he/she has a reasonable expectation that private communication and internet usage are free from interference (see cases Halford v. United Kingdom (1997) and Copland v. United Kingdom (2007)). However, such cases shall be differentiated from the ones where internal regulations of the employer strictly prohibit employees from using company’s computers and resources for personal purposes.