Published on 21 July 2025
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 19344/23
Mariana GHIOC
against Romania
lodged on 5 May 2023
communicated on 1 July 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the use of recordings made by the applicant’s employer, a private company, in disciplinary proceedings that led to her dismissal. She challenged the dismissal before the labour courts, arguing, among other things, that the recordings had been made in absence of her consent and had breached her private life, but her claims were rejected. The final decision was delivered by the Bacău Court of Appeal on 2 November 2022 and was notified to the applicant on 15 February 2023. The domestic courts found that the recordings could be used as evidence because they did not disclose private conversations, but amounted only to the recording of the applicant’s voice at the workplace which was not a private place. They further held that applicant’s private life had not been breached.
The applicant complains under Article 8 of the Convention that the State authorities did not meet their positive obligations under that provision of the Convention since recordings made in a private space without her consent had been used in court proceedings and had supported the judicial decisions.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Have the State authorities effectively protected the applicant’s right to respect of her private life (López Ribalda and Others v. Spain [GC], nos. 1874/13 and 8567/13, §§ 110-111, 17 October 2019)?
2. In particular, have the domestic courts managed a fair balance between the competing interests at stake, namely, the applicant’s right to respect of her private life, on the one hand, and her employer’s interests, on the other hand? In this regard, have the factors deriving from the Court’s case-law (see, among others, Bărbulescu v. Romania [GC], no. 61496/08, §§ 121-122, 5 September 2017, and Florindo de Almeida Vasconcelos Gramaxo v. Portugal, no. 26968/16, § 109, 13 December 2022) duly been taken into consideration?
The Government are invited to provide a full copy of the file before the domestic courts.