By Hajer M'tiri
PARIS
Employers cannot go through employees' work emails unless they inform them first, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday.
The ruling is a significant legal development which limits to what extent firms can scrutinize employees’ private communications.
In the case, the applicant, Romanian national Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu, was employed by a private company as an engineer in charge of sales.
He was fired by his employer in 2007 for using his work Yahoo! Messenger account "for personal purposes" -- exchanges with his brother and fiance.
The Grand Chamber, the ECHR' supreme body, ruled by an 11- 6 majority that Romanian judges -- by backing the employer -- had failed to protect Barbulescu’s right to private life and correspondence.
The top European court initially ruled in January 2016 that it was not “unreasonable that an employer would want to verify that employees were completing their professional tasks during working hours”.
However, the Grand Chamber agreed to
