Privacy in the Case Law of the European Court of Justice

The European Court of Human Rights (hereafter: the Court) plays an indispensable role in interpretation of the European Convention of Human Rights. Art. 8 of the Convention protects right to respect everyone’s private and family life, home and correspondence. While assessing whether the article 8 has been breached, use the Court a four-step test: whether the individual’s privacy has been infringed, whether the infringement was in accordance with the law, whether the infringement is justified by reasons provided by the second paragraph of art. 8 and whether the infringement is necessary in the democratic society. In some cases, especially in issues where there does not exist a uniform approach in all member states of the Convention, the Court awards the states broader margin of appreciation.
Since privacy is not an easy definable term, the Court does not attempt to adjudicate about privacy as such, but is rather focused on unique dimensions of the private life. The decisions of the Court refer in particular to family life, right to live in unpolluted environment, domicile, sexual life and gender, correspondence and personal data. The Court adjudicated for instance that a family where parents are married is equal to an unmarried couple and its children; the privacy of correspondence relates to communication on a workplace as well as to emails; a breach of the right on privacy is to penalize a voluntary sexual intercourse of homosexual couples or that pollution interfere with the private life of an individual.