The European Workplace: The Right to Privacy and Data Protection

One of the main aims of this paper is to assess the protection of employees’ rights to privacy in Europe as a whole. Therefore data protection and the jurisprudence of the European Convention on Human Rights are presented together. Additionally, there is an attempt to link data protection law with human rights, and in particular with the right to privacy; and that is because not only they complete each other, but because only together they provide effective protection to workers ’ rights. Each society produces the laws that it needs; if we lived in a perfect society, there would be no need for legislators to create criminal law. Accordingly, the fact that there is legal protection to the privacy rights of employees means that these rights were and are in danger. Hopefully, this paper helps the reader to understand not only how these rights are protected now, but also why they need protection