Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to respect for one's "private andfamily life, his home and hiscorrespondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". TheEuropean Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms) is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe.
Article 8 – Right to respect for private and family life
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
Article 8 is considered to be one of the convention's most open-ended provisions.[1]
InX, Y, and Z v. UK, the Court recalls that "the notion of 'family life' in Article 8 is not confined solely to families based on marriage and may encompass other de facto relationships. When deciding whether a relationship can be said to amount to 'family life', a number of factors may be relevant, including whether the couples live together, the length of their relationship and whether they have demonstrated their commitment to each other by having children together or by any other means.
For better understanding of perception of "private life" case law should be analyzed. InNiemietz v. Germany, the Court held that it "does not consider it possible or necessary to attempt an exhaustive definition of the notion of 'private life'. However, it would be too restrictive to limit the notion to an 'inner circle' in which the individual may live his own personal life as he choose and to exclude therefrom entirely the outside world not encompassed within that circle. Respect for private life must also comprise[3] to a certain degree the right to establish and develop relationship and develop relationship with other human beings."
Article 8 clearly provides a right to be free of unlawful searches, but the Court has given the protection for "private and family life" that this article provides a broad interpretation, taking for instance that prohibition of private consensual homosexual acts violates this article. This may be compared to the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, which has also adopted a somewhat broad interpretation of theright to privacy. Furthermore, Article 8 sometimes comprisespositive obligations: whereas classical human rights are formulated as prohibiting a State from interfering with rights, and thusnot to do something (e.g. not to separate a family under family life protection), the effective enjoyment of such rights may also include an obligation for the State to become active, and todo something (e.g. to enforce access for a divorced father to his child).
Rotaru v. Romania [2000] ECHR 192 – Public information that is systematically collected and stored in files held by a state or its agents falls within the scope of private life.[7]
Pretty v. United Kingdom [2002] – Article 8 extends to protect the right to die. Like with articles 9, 10 and 11, it can be interfered with provided there is valid justification, as there was inPretty.
S and Marper v United Kingdom [2008] ECHR 1581 – Retention of DNA information in respect of persons arrested but not convicted of an offence was held to breach Article 8.
A, B and C v Ireland [2010] ECHR 2032 – Article 8 does not confer a "right to abortion", but the Republic of Ireland breached it by making it difficult for a woman to establish whether she qualifies for a legal abortion.
Gillan and Quinton v United Kingdom [2010] ECHR 28 – Stop and search powers granted to police under ss. 44–47 of theTerrorism Act 2000 were neither sufficiently circumscribed nor subject to adequate legal safeguards against abuse. As such, the Court found the powers not to be "in accordance with the law", in violation of Article 8.[8]
Birmingham City Council v Clue (2010) EWCA Civ 460 29/4/2010 – A challenge to the decision to refuse to provide Ms Clue and her family with essential support pending the UK Border Agency's determination of her application forindefinite leave to remain in the UK. In a ground-breaking decision of the Court of Appeal, the judgment extends the scope of community care provision for families subject to immigration control who seek to remain in the UK on Article 8 ECHR grounds.
Zakharov v. Russia (2015) – The Court examined Russian surveillance legislationin abstracto, finding unanimously that the existence of inadequate legislation and its application in practice themselves amounted to a violation of the applicant's rights under Article 8.[9]
Aycaguer v. France (2017) – ECtHR found France's use of biological sampling for criminal DNA databases to be a violation of Article 8 in the case of Jean-Michel Aycaguer, a French national convicted of non-violent crime. Importantly, the court did not find the entire practice to be in violation, but claimed that the seriousness of Aycaguer's crimes did not constitute a situation wherein public interest outweighed his right to privacy in his private life.[11]
H.W. v. France [2025] – ECtHR held that a French woman was not at fault for her divorce due to not engaging in sexual relations with her husband. Overturned French court decisions that deemed her failure to fulfil "marital duties" (devoir conjugal, i.e. sexual intercourse) as grounds for fault.[12]
The notion of private life in the Article 8 is also interpreted as including some duty of environmental protection.[13][self-published source?]
Modinos v. Cyprus (1993) – Ruling invalidatingSection 171 of the Criminal Code of Cyprus under which male homosexual acts were banned, finding that there had been a breach under Article 8 of the applicant's right to respect for private life.
Smith and Grady v United Kingdom (1999) 29 EHRR 493 – The investigation into and subsequent discharge of personnel from the Royal Navy on the basis of sexual orientation was a breach of the right to a private life under Article 8.
Van Kück v. Germany [2003] ECHR 285 – Inadequate access to a fair hearing in a case involving reimbursement by a private medical insurer for costs ofhormone replacement therapy andgender reassignment surgery by a transsexual woman, where undue burden had been placed upon her to prove the medical necessity of the treatment, was a violation under Article 8 andArticle 6 § 1.[14]
Oliari and Others v Italy (2015) – Italy violated Article 8 by not providing legal recognition to same-sex couples.
A 2014 report to theUN General Assembly by theUnited Nations' top official forcounter-terrorism andhuman rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of coreprivacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions and makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" – which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" – and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels ofInternet penetration can [] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particularwebsites". Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, includingterrorism, is justified, according to a decision by theEuropean Court of Justice.[22]
^Rotaru v. Romania (2000) ECHR 28341/95, paras. 43–44: "Moreover, public information can fall within the scope of private life where it is systematically collected and stored in files held by the authorities. That is all the truer where such information concerns a person's distant past ... In the Court's opinion, such information, when systematically collected and stored in a file held by agents of the State, falls within the scope of 'private life' for the purposes of Article 8(1) of the Convention."
