Bărbulescu v Romania [2017]

Readers may remember that we reported on this case at the European Court of Human Rights in January 2016. It involved a Romanian employee who was employed in Bucharest as a sales engineer. At his employer’s request, for the purpose of responding to customers’ enquiries, he created an instant messaging account using Yahoo Messenger, an online chat service offering real-time text transmission over the internet. He already had another personal Yahoo Messenger account. His employer’s internal regulations prohibited the use of company resources by employees for personal use but, crucially, did not contain any reference to the possibility for the employer to monitor employees’ communications.

The