Data Protection of Employees – Certain Aspects of ECHR and GDPR Protection

Privacy issues of employees have been dealt with by some of the key judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (´the ECtHR´), giving as such an interpretation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (´the ECHR´), in particular Article 8, the right to respect for private life. The General Data Protection Regulation (´the GDPR´), has managed to regulate in a unique way privacy issues in the European Union (´the EU´), but under certain conditions having wider territorial implications. Privacy issues regarding the employees cover very detailed aspects before the employment, during the employment and after the employment. This paper does not aim to give exhaustive explanations to overall privacy issues connected to a working place and in general employees, but rather to point out to certain aspects of possible privacy violations with regard to workers/employees. It shall give a short comparison between the two most successful systems in Europe that may give protection to data privacy issues, which are the European human rights system, with the case-law of the ECHR developed by the ECtHR in Strasbourg, and the system of the protection of privacy data that has been implemented since 25 May 2018 under the GDPR.