Source: https://ciberjuristen.nl/prive-email-op-werkplek/
Timestamp: 2019-08-22 22:52:07
Document Index: 90270113

Matched Legal Cases: ['art. 8', 'art. 8', 'art. 8', 'art. 8', 'in fine', 'in fine']

Privé-email op werkplek – Ciber Juristen
Privé-email op werkplek
Ciber JuristenPrivé-email op werkplek
Datum uitspraak: 05-09-2017
ECLI: ECLI:CE:ECHR:2017:0905JUD006149608
Partijen: Barbulescu,
Ontslag wegens e-mailen op werkplek, Recht op privacy op het werk
De werknemer, van Roemeense nationaliteit, is gedurende drie jaar als sales engineer bij de werkgever in dienst geweest. In juli 2007 heeft de werkgever de werknemer ontslagen wegens gebruik van het internet op het werk voor persoonlijke doeleinden, waaronder een e-mailwisseling met zijn broer en één met zijn verloofde over, onder meer, zijn gezondheid en zijn seksleven. De werknemer heeft gesteld dat dit ontslag nietig is omdat de werkgever in strijd heeft gehandeld met zijn recht op correspondentie. De Roemeense rechter heeft het beroep verworpen. De werknemer heeft vervolgens een klacht ingediend bij het EHRM over schending van zijn recht op privacy (art. 8). Een kamer van het EHRM (zeven rechters) heeft geoordeeld dat art. 8 EVRM niet is geschonden. De werknemer heeft verwijzing naar de Grote Kamer (17 rechters) gevraagd.
De Grote Kamer van het EHRM komt nu tot de conclusie dat art. 8 wel is geschonden. De Grote Kamer overweegt dat een werkgever niet het recht heeft om het privéleven op de werkplek tot nul terug te brengen. Ook op het werk bestaat een recht op privacy, ook al mag dit worden ingeperkt. Anders dan de eerdere Kamer, oordeelt de Grote Kamer dat de nationale rechters geen juist evenwicht hebben gevonden tussen het belang van de werkgever en dat van de werknemer. De nationale rechter heeft niet onderzocht of de werknemer vooraf was geïnformeerd over de mogelijkheid van controle op zijn e-mail en heeft geen aandacht besteed aan de omvang van de inbreuk op de privacy van de werknemer, hoewel de werkgever alle gesprekken van de werknemer had uitgeprint. Verder is de nationale rechter niet nagegaan of er voldoende redenen waren voor controle op de e-mail van de werknemer en evenmin of het onderzoek niet op een minder ingrijpende wijze had kunnen worden uitgevoerd. Ten slotte heeft geen van de betrokken rechters in zijn overwegingen betrokken dat de werkgever direct de meest zware sanctie (ontslag) heeft opgelegd. De conclusie is dat de nationale autoriteiten het recht op privacy van de werknemer onvoldoende hebben beschermd en dat in strijd is gehandeld met art. 8. EVRM De werknemer krijgt geen vergoeding voor immateriële schade, omdat het oordeel van het EHRM op zich wordt beschouwd als een voldoende genoegdoening.
NB. Zie «JAR» 2016/43 voor het eerdere oordeel van het EHRM. Uitgangspunt in het Nederlandse recht is ook dat er een zeker recht op privacy bestaat op de werkplek, maar dat hieraan wel begrenzingen mogen worden gesteld. Zie onder meer «JAR» 2015/40 en «JAR» 2014/273. Bij misbruik is ontslag mogelijk, zelfs op staande voet, zoals in «JAR» 2017/241.
10. The applicant was born in 1979 and lives in Bucharest.
11. From 1 August 2004 to 6 August 2007 he was employed in the Bucharest office of S., a Romanian private company (“the employer”), 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.
– (...) personal use of computers, photocopiers, telephones or telex or fax machines.”
13. The regulations did not contain any reference to the possibility for the employer to monitor employees’ communications.
14. It appears from documents submitted by the Government that the applicant had been informed of the employer’s internal regulations and had signed a copy of them on 20 December 2006 after acquainting himself with their contents.
15. On 3 July 2007 the Bucharest office received and circulated among all its employees an information notice that had been drawn up and sent by the Cluj head office on 26 June 2007. The employer asked employees to acquaint themselves with the notice and to sign a copy of it. The relevant parts of the notice read as follows:
“1. (...) Time spent in the company must be quality time for everyone! Come to work to deal with company and professional matters, and not your own personal problems! Don’t spend your time using the internet, the phone or the fax machine for matters unconnected to work or your duties. This is what [elementary education], common sense and the law dictate! The employer has a duty to supervise and monitor employees’ work and to take punitive measures against anyone at fault!
3. Have a careful read of the collective labour agreement, the company’s internal regulations, your job description and the employment contract you have signed! These are the basis of our collaboration! Between employer and employee! (...)”
16. It also appears from the documents submitted by the Government, including the employer’s attendance register, that the applicant acquainted himself with the notice and signed it between 3 and 13 July 2007.
19. On the same day, the applicant informed the employer in writing that he had used Yahoo Messenger for work-related purposes only.
20. At 5.20 p.m. the employer again summoned him to give an explanation in a notice worded as follows:
21. The forty-five pages mentioned in the notice consisted of a transcript of the messages which the applicant had exchanged with his brother and his fiancée during the period when he had been monitored; the messages related to personal matters and some were of an intimate nature. The transcript also included five messages that the applicant had exchanged with his fiancée using his personal Yahoo Messenger account; these messages did not contain any intimate information.
22. Also on 13 July, the applicant informed the employer in writing that in his view it had committed a criminal offence, namely breaching the secrecy of correspondence.
23. On 1 August 2007 the employer terminated the applicant’s contract of employment.
24. The applicant challenged his dismissal in an application to the Bucharest County Court (“the County Court”). He asked the court, firstly, to set aside the dismissal; secondly, to order his employer to pay him the amounts he was owed in respect of wages and any other entitlements and to reinstate him in his post; and thirdly, to order the employer to pay him 100,000 Romanian lei (approximately 30,000 euros) in damages for the harm resulting from the manner of his dismissal, and to reimburse his costs and expenses.
25. As to the merits, relying on Copland v. the United Kingdom (no. 62617/00, par. 43-44, ECHR 2007-I), he argued that an employee’s telephone and email communications from the workplace were covered by the notions of “private life” and “correspondence” and were therefore protected by Article 8 of the Convention. He also submitted that the decision to dismiss him was unlawful and that by monitoring his communications and accessing their contents his employer had infringed criminal law.
26. With regard specifically to the harm he claimed to have suffered, the applicant noted the manner of his dismissal and alleged that he had been subjected to harassment by his employer through the monitoring of his communications and the disclosure of their contents “to colleagues who were involved in one way or another in the dismissal procedure”.
27. The applicant submitted evidence including a full copy of the transcript of his Yahoo Messenger communications and a copy of the information notice (see paragraph 15 above).
28. In a judgment of 7 December 2007 the County Court rejected the applicant’s application and confirmed that his dismissal had been lawful. The relevant parts of the judgment read as follows:
The court considers that the acts committed by the applicant constitute a disciplinary offence within the meaning of Article 263 par. 2 of the Labour Code since they amount to a culpable breach of the provisions of Article 50 of S.’s internal regulations (...), which prohibit the use of computers for personal purposes.
29. The applicant appealed to the Bucharest Court of Appeal (“the Court of Appeal”). He repeated the arguments he had submitted before the first-instance court and contended in addition that that court had not struck a fair balance between the interests at stake, unjustly prioritising the employer’s interest in enjoying discretion to control its employees’ time and resources. He further argued that neither the internal regulations nor the information notice had contained any indication that the employer could monitor employees’ communications.
30. The Court of Appeal dismissed the applicant’s appeal in a judgment of 17 June 2008, the relevant parts of which read:
In conclusion, an employer who has made an investment is entitled, in exercising the rights enshrined in Article 40 par. 1 of the Labour Code, to monitor internet use in the workplace, and an employee who breaches the employer’s rules on personal internet use is committing a disciplinary offence that may give rise to a sanction, including the most serious one.
– Principle of necessity: monitoring must be necessary to achieve a certain aim.
– Principle of purpose specification: data must be collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes.
– Principle of transparency: the employer must provide employees with full information about monitoring operations.
– Principle of legitimacy: data-processing operations may only take place for a legitimate purpose.
– Principle of proportionality: personal data being monitored must be relevant and adequate in relation to the specified purpose.
– Principle of security: the employer is required to take all possible security measures to ensure that the data collected are not accessible to third parties.
Accordingly, having regard to the considerations set out above, the court finds that the decision of the first-instance court is lawful and well-founded and that the appeal is unfounded; it must therefore be dismissed, in accordance with the provisions of Article 312 par. 1 of the C[ode of] Civ[il] Pr[ocedure].”
31. In the meantime, on 18 September 2007 the applicant had lodged a criminal complaint against the statutory representatives of S., alleging a breach of the secrecy of correspondence. On 9 May 2012 the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) of the prosecutor’s office attached to the Supreme Court of Cassation and Justice ruled that there was no case to answer, on the grounds that the company was the owner of the computer system and the internet connection and could therefore monitor its employees’ internet activity and use the information stored on the server, and in view of the prohibition on personal use of the IT systems, as a result of which the monitoring had been foreseeable. The applicant did not avail himself of the opportunity provided for by the applicable procedural rules to challenge the prosecuting authorities’ decision in the domestic courts.
56. In its judgment of 12 January 2016 the Chamber held, firstly, that Article 8 of the Convention was applicable in the present case. Referring to the concept of reasonable expectation of privacy, it found that the present case differed from Copland (cited above, par. 41) and Halford v. the United Kingdom (25 June 1997, par. 45, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-III) in that the applicant’s employer’s internal regulations in the present case strictly prohibited employees from using company computers and resources for personal purposes. The Chamber had regard to the nature of the applicant’s communications and the fact that a transcript of them had been used as evidence in the domestic court proceedings, and concluded that the applicant’s right to respect for his “private life” and “correspondence” was at stake.
62. The Court reiterates that the case referred to the Grand Chamber is the application as it has been declared admissible by the Chamber (see K. and T. v. Finland [GC], no. 25702/94, par. 140-41, ECHR 2001-VII; D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic [GC], no. 57325/00, par. 109, ECHR 2007-IV; and Blokhin v. Russia [GC], no. 47152/06, par. 91, ECHR 2016).
69. The Court notes that the question arising in the present case is whether the matters complained of by the applicant fall within the scope of Article 8 of the Convention.
70. At this stage of its examination it considers it useful to emphasise that “private life” is a broad term not susceptible to exhaustive definition (see Sidabras and Dziautas v. Lithuania, nos. 55480/00 and 59330/00, par. 43, ECHR 2004-VIII). Article 8 of the Convention protects the right to personal development (see K.A. and A.D. v. Belgium, nos. 42758/98 and 45558/99, par. 83, 17 February 2005), whether in terms of personality (see Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 28957/95, par. 90, ECHR 2002-VI) or of personal autonomy, which is an important principle underlying the interpretation of the Article 8 guarantees (see Pretty v. the United Kingdom, no. 2346/02, par. 61, ECHR 2002-III). The Court acknowledges that everyone has the right to live privately, away from unwanted attention (see Smirnova v. Russia,nos. 46133/99 and 48183/99, par. 95, ECHR 2003-IX (extracts)). It also considers that it would be too restrictive to limit the notion of “private life” to an “inner circle” in which the individual may live his or her own personal life as he or she chooses, thus excluding entirely the outside world not encompassed within that circle (see Niemietz v. Germany, 16 December 1992, par. 29, Series A no. 251-B). Article 8 thus guarantees a right to “private life” in the broad sense, including the right to lead a “private social life”, that is, the possibility for the individual to develop his or her social identity. In that respect, the right in question enshrines the possibility of approaching others in order to establish and develop relationships with them (see Bigaeva v. Greece, no. 26713/05, par. 22, 28 May 2009, and Özpinar v. Turkey, no. 20999/04, par. 45 in fine, 19 October 2010).
71. The Court considers that the notion of “private life” may include professional activities (see Fernández Martínez v. Spain [GC], no. 56030/07, par. 110, ECHR 2014 (extracts), and Oleksandr Volkov v. Ukraine, no. 21722/11, par. 165-66, ECHR 2013), or activities taking place in a public context (see Von Hannover v. Germany (no. 2) [GC], nos. 40660/08 and 60641/08, par. 95, ECHR 2012). Restrictions on an individual’s professional life may fall within Article 8 where they have repercussions on the manner in which he or she constructs his or her social identity by developing relationships with others. It should be noted in this connection that it is in the course of their working lives that the majority of people have a significant, if not the greatest, opportunity to develop relationships with the outside world (see Niemietz, cited above, par. 29).
72. Furthermore, as regards the notion of “correspondence”, it should be noted that in the wording of Article 8 this word is not qualified by any adjective, unlike the term “life”. And indeed, the Court has already held that, in the context of correspondence by means of telephone calls, no such qualification is to be made. In a number of cases relating to correspondence with a lawyer, it has not even envisaged the possibility that Article 8 might be inapplicable on the ground that the correspondence was of a professional nature (see Niemietz, cited above, par. 32, with further references). Furthermore, it has held that telephone conversations are covered by the notions of “private life” and “correspondence” within the meaning of Article 8 (see Roman Zakharov v. Russia [GC], no. 47143/06, par. 173, ECHR 2015). In principle, this is also true where telephone calls are made from or received on business premises (see Halford, cited above, par. 44, and Amann v. Switzerland [GC], no. 27798/95, par. 44, ECHR 2000-II). The same applies to emails sent from the workplace, which enjoy similar protection under Article 8, as does information derived from the monitoring of a person’s internet use (see Copland, cited above, par. 41 in fine).
73. It is clear from the Court’s case-law that communications from business premises as well as from the home may be covered by the notions of “private life” and “correspondence” within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention (see Halford, cited above, par. 44; and Copland, cited above, par. 41). In order to ascertain whether the notions of “private life” and “correspondence” are applicable, the Court has on several occasions examined whether individuals had a reasonable expectation that their privacy would be respected and protected (ibid.; and as regards “private life”, see also Köpke v. Germany (dec.), no. 420/07, 5 October 2010). In that context, it has stated that a reasonable expectation of privacy is a significant though not necessarily conclusive factor (see Köpke, cited above).
74. Applying these principles in the present case, the Court first observes that the kind of internet instant messaging service at issue is just one of the forms of communication enabling individuals to lead a private social life. At the same time, the sending and receiving of communications is covered by the notion of “correspondence”, even if they are sent from an employer’s computer. The Court notes, however, that the applicant’s employer instructed him and the other employees to refrain from any personal activities in the workplace. This requirement on the employer’s part was reflected in measures including a ban on using company resources for personal purposes (see paragraph 12 above).
75. The Court further notes that with a view to ensuring that this requirement was met, the employer set up a system for monitoring its employees’ internet use (see paragraphs 17 and 18 above). The documents in the case file, in particular those relating to the disciplinary proceedings against the applicant, indicate that during the monitoring process, both the flow and the content of the applicants’ communications were recorded and stored (see paragraphs 18 and 20 above).
76. The Court observes in addition that despite this requirement on the employer’s part, the applicant exchanged messages of a personal nature with his fiancée and his brother (see paragraph 21 above). Some of these messages were of an intimate nature (ibid.).
80. It is open to question whether – and if so, to what extent – the employer’s restrictive regulations left the applicant with a reasonable expectation of privacy. Be that as it may, an employer’s instructions cannot reduce private social life in the workplace to zero. Respect for private life and for the privacy of correspondence continues to exist, even if these may be restricted in so far as necessary.
81. In the light of all the above considerations, the Court concludes that the applicant’s communications in the workplace were covered by the concepts of “private life” and “correspondence”. Accordingly, in the circumstances of the present case, Article 8 of the Convention is applicable.
108. The Court must determine whether the present case should be examined in terms of the State’s negative or positive obligations. It reiterates that by Article 1 of the Convention, the Contracting Parties “shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in (...) [the] Convention”. While the essential object of Article 8 of the Convention is to protect individuals against arbitrary interference by public authorities, it may also impose on the State certain positive obligations to ensure effective respect for the rights protected by Article 8 (see,among other authorities, X and Y v. the Netherlands, 26 March 1985, par. 23, Series A no. 91; Von Hannover (no. 2), cited above, par. 98;and Hämäläinen v. Finland [GC], no. 37359/09, par. 62, ECHR 2014).
110. Nevertheless, the Court notes that the measure taken by the employer was accepted by the national courts. It is true that the monitoring of the applicant’s communications was not the result of direct intervention by the national authorities; however, their responsibility would be engaged if the facts complained of stemmed from a failure on their part to secure to the applicant the enjoyment of a right enshrined in Article 8 of the Convention (see, mutatis mutandis, Obst v. Germany,no. 425/03, par. 40 and 43, 23 September 2010, and Schüth v. Germany, no. 1620/03, par. 54 and 57, ECHR 2010).
112. While the boundaries between the State’s positive and negative obligations under the Convention do not lend themselves to precise definition, the applicable principles are nonetheless similar. In both contexts regard must be had in particular to the fair balance that has to be struck between the competing interests of the individual and of the community as a whole, subject in any event to the margin of appreciation enjoyed by the State (see Palomo Sánchez and Others v. Spain [GC], nos. 28955/06 and 3 others, par. 62, ECHR 2011).
(b) General principles applicable to the assessment of the State’s positive obligation to ensure respect for private life and correspondence in an employment context
113. The Court reiterates that the choice of the means calculated to secure compliance with Article 8 of the Convention in the sphere of the relations of individuals between themselves is in principle a matter that falls within the Contracting States’ margin of appreciation. There are different ways of ensuring respect for private life, and the nature of the State’s obligation will depend on the particular aspect of private life that is at issue (see Söderman v. Sweden [GC], no. 5786/08, par. 79, ECHR 2013, with further references).
114. The Court’s task in the present case is therefore to clarify the nature and scope of the positive obligations that the respondent State was required to comply with in protecting the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and correspondence in the context of his employment.
115. The Court observes that it has held that in certain circumstances, the State’s positive obligations under Article 8 of the Convention are not adequately fulfilled unless it secures respect for private life in the relations between individuals by setting up a legislative framework taking into consideration the various interests to be protected in a particular context (see X and Y v. the Netherlands, cited above, par. 23, 24 and 27, and M.C. v. Bulgaria,no. 39272/98, par. 150, ECHR 2003-XII, both concerning sexual assaults of minors; see also K.U. v. Finland, no. 2872/02, par. 43 and 49, ECHR 2008, concerning an advertisement of a sexual nature placed on an internet dating site in the name of a minor; Söderman, cited above, par. 85, concerning the effectiveness of remedies in respect of an alleged violation of personal integrity committed by a close relative; and Codarcea v. Romania, no. 31675/04, par. 102-04, 2 June 2009, concerning medical negligence).
116. The Court accepts that protective measures are not only to be found in labour law, but also in civil and criminal law. As far as labour law is concerned, it must ascertain whether in the present case the respondent State was required to set up a legislative framework to protect the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and correspondence in the context of his professional relationship with a private employer.
117. In this connection it considers at the outset that labour law has specific features that must be taken into account. The employer-employee relationship is contractual, with particular rights and obligations on either side, and is characterised by legal subordination. It is governed by its own legal rules, which differ considerably from those generally applicable to relations between individuals(see Saumier v. France, no. 74734/14, par. 60, 12 January 2017).
118. From a regulatory perspective, labour law leaves room for negotiation between the parties to the contract of employment. Thus, it is generally for the parties themselves to regulate a significant part of the content of their relations (see, mutatis mutandis, Wretlund v. Sweden (dec.), no. 46210/99, 9 March 2004, concerning the compatibility with Article 8 of the Convention of the obligation for the applicant, an employee at a nuclear plant, to undergo drug tests; with regard to trade-union action from the standpoint of Article 11, see Gustafsson v. Sweden, 25 April 1996, par. 45, Reports 1996-II, and, mutatis mutandis, Demir and Baykara v. Turkey [GC], no. 34503/97, par. 140-46, ECHR 2008, for the specific case of civil servants). It also appears from the comparative-law material at the Court’s disposal that there is no European consensus on this issue. Few member States have explicitly regulated the question of the exercise by employees of their right to respect for their private life and correspondence in the workplace (see paragraph 52 above).
119. In the light of the above considerations, the Court takes the view that the Contracting States must be granted a wide margin of appreciation in assessing the need to establish a legal framework governing the conditions in which an employer may regulate electronic or other communications of a non-professional nature by its employees in the workplace.
120. Nevertheless, the discretion enjoyed by States in this field cannot be unlimited. The domestic authorities should ensure that the introduction by an employer of measures to monitor correspondence and other communications, irrespective of the extent and duration of such measures, is accompanied by adequate and sufficient safeguards against abuse (see, mutatis mutandis, Klass and Others v. Germany, 6 September 1978, par. 50, Series A no. 28, and Roman Zakharov, cited above, par. 232-34).
(i) whether the employee has beennotified of the possibility that the employer might take measures to monitor correspondence and other communications, and of the implementation of such measures. While in practice employees may be notified in various ways depending on the particular factual circumstances of each case, the Court considers that for the measures to be deemed compatible with the requirements of Article 8 of the Convention, the notification should normally be clear about the nature of the monitoring and be given in advance;
(ii) theextent of the monitoring by the employer and the degree of intrusion into the employee’s privacy. In this regard, a distinction should be made between monitoring of the flow of communications and of their content. Whether all communications or only part of them have been monitored should also be taken into account, as should the question whether the monitoring was limited in time and the number of people who had access to the results (see Köpke, cited above). The same applies to the spatial limits to the monitoring;
(v) the consequences of the monitoring for the employee subjected to it (see, mutatis mutandis, the similar criterion applied in the assessment of the proportionality of an interference with the exercise of freedom of expression as protected by Article 10 of the Convention in Axel Springer AG v. Germany [GC], no. 39954/08, par. 95, 7 February 2012, with further references); and the use made by the employer of the results of the monitoring operation, in particular whether the results were used to achieve the declared aim of the measure (see Köpke, cited above);
In this context, it is worth reiterating that in order to be fruitful, labour relations must be based on mutual trust (see Palomo Sánchez and Others, cited above, par. 76).
122. Lastly, the domestic authorities should ensure that an employee whose communications have been monitored has access to a remedy before a judicial body with jurisdiction to determine, at least in substance, how the criteria outlined above were observed and whether the impugned measures were lawful (see Obst, cited above, par. 45, and Köpke, cited above).
127. It therefore considers that the complaint before it concerns the applicant’s dismissal based on the monitoring carried out by his employer. More specifically, it must ascertain in the present case whether the national authorities performed a balancing exercise, in accordance with the requirements of Article 8 of the Convention, between the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and correspondence and the employer’s interests. Its task is therefore to determine whether, in the light of all the circumstances of the case, the competent national authorities struck a fair balance between the competing interests at stake when accepting the monitoring measures to which the applicant was subjected (see, mutatis mutandis, Palomo Sánchez and Others, cited above, par. 62). It acknowledges that the employer has a legitimate interest in ensuring the smooth running of the company, and that this can be done by establishing mechanisms for checking that its employees are performing their professional duties adequately and with the necessary diligence.
128. In the light of the above considerations, the Court will first examine the manner in which the domestic courts established the relevant facts in the present case. Both the County Court and the Court of Appeal held that the applicant had had prior notification from his employer (see paragraphs 28 and 30 above). The Court must thenascertain whether the domestic courts observed the requirements of the Convention when considering the case.
129. At this stage, the Court considers it useful to reiterate that when it comes to establishing the facts, it is sensitive to the subsidiary nature of its task and must be cautious in taking on the role of a first-instance tribunal of fact, where this is not rendered unavoidable by the circumstances of a particular case (see Mustafa Tunç and Fecire Tunç v. Turkey [GC], no. 24014/05, par. 182, 14 April 2015). Where domestic proceedings have taken place, it is not the Court’s task to substitute its own assessment of the facts for that of the domestic courts and it is for the latter to establish the facts on the basis of the evidence before them (see, among other authorities, Edwards v. the United Kingdom, 16 December 1992, par. 34, Series A no. 247-B). Though the Court is not bound by the findings of domestic courts and remains free to make its own assessment in the light of all the material before it, in normal circumstances it requires cogent elements to lead it to depart from the findings of fact reached by the domestic courts (see Giuliani and Gaggio v. Italy [GC], no. 23458/02, par. 180, ECHR 2011 (extracts), and Aydan v. Turkey, no. 16281/10, par. 69, 12 March 2013).
143. Before the Chamber, the applicant claimed 59,976.12 euros (€) in respect of the pecuniary damage he had allegedly sustained. He explained that this amount represented the current value of the wages to which he would have been entitled if he had not been dismissed. At the hearing before the Grand Chamber, the applicant’s representatives stated that they maintained their claim for just satisfaction.
146. Before the Chamber, the applicant also claimed € 200,000 in respect of the non-pecuniary damage he had allegedly sustained as a result of his dismissal. He stated that because of the disciplinary nature of the dismissal, he had been unable to find another job, that his standard of living had consequently deteriorated, that he had lost his social standing and that as a result, his fiancée had decided in 2010 to end their relationship.
149. Before the Chamber, the applicant also claimed 3,310 Romanian lei (RON) (approximately € 750) in respect of the costs and expenses incurred in the domestic courts, and RON 500 (approximately € 115) for the fees of the lawyer who had represented him in the domestic proceedings. He claimed a further € 500 for the fees of the lawyers who had represented him before the Court. He produced the following in support of his claim:
– copies of the legal-aid agreement and of the receipt for payment of the sum of RON 500, corresponding to his lawyer’s fees in the domestic proceedings;
– documents proving that he had paid his employer the sums of RON 2,700 and RON 610.30 in respect of costs and expenses;
– a copy of the receipt for payment of the sum of RON 2,218.64, corresponding to the fees of one of the lawyers who had represented him before the Court.
150. In their observations before the Chamber, the Government requested the Court to award the applicant only those sums that were necessary and corresponded to duly substantiated claims. In that connection, they submitted that the applicant had not proved that he had paid € 500 in fees to the lawyers who had represented him before the Court, and that the receipt for payment of a sum of RON 500 in fees to the lawyer who had represented him in the domestic courts had not been accompanied by any supporting documents detailing the hours worked.
151. According to the Court’s case-law, an applicant is entitled to the reimbursement of costs and expenses only in so far as it has been shown that these have been actually and necessarily incurred and are reasonable as to quantum (see Lupeni Greek Catholic Parish and Others v. Romania [GC], no. 76943/11, par. 187, ECHR 2016 (extracts)). In the present case, having regard to the documents in its possession and to its case-law, the Court considers it reasonable to award the applicant the sum of € 1,365 covering costs under all heads.
1. Holds, by eleven votes to six, that there has been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention;
2. Holds, by sixteen votes to one, that the finding of a violation constitutes in itself sufficient just satisfaction for the non-pecuniary damage sustained by the applicant;
3. Holds, by fourteen votes to three,
(a) that the respondent State is to pay the applicant, within three months, € 1,365 (one thousand three hundred and sixty-five euros) in respect of costs and expenses, to be converted into the currency of the respondent State at the rate applicable at the date of settlement, plus any tax that may be chargeable to the applicant;