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In some cases, the Court decided that it was not necessary to reach any separate
conclusion regarding the complaints under Article 8 in view of its finding of
a violation of the other Article the Convention.
49
This was the situation in the case
of
Tinnelly & Sons Ltd and Others and McElduff and Others v. the United Kingdom,
50
where the Court found a breach of the rights of access to court (Article 6 of the
Convention) and refused to examine the case under Article 8 separately.
6. Conclusions
The analysed case-law of the Court shows that Article 8 of the Convention belongs
to those provisions which are applicable to legal persons to a very limited extent.
Primarily, the Commission concluded that legal entities do not possess a victim status
under Article 8 of the Convention. Later on the situation changed and nowadays a
new Court in a number of cases has ruled that the right of a legal person under this
Article had been violated.
The rights under Article 8 may be divided into the four main groups: 1) right
to respect for private life; 2) 1) right to respect for family life; 3) right to respect for
“home” and 4) right to respect for correspondence. Though the title of the Article at
issue is “Respect for private and family life”, the practice shows that private and family
life of legal entities is nowadays not guaranteed by it. The Court in its judgments
in respect of legal persons yet had found a breach only of the rights to “home” and
correspondence. It has to be mentioned that the term “home” has an autonomous
meaning in the Convention and includes the right to respect for a company’s
registered office, branches or other business premises. Consequently, the main issues
concerning rights of legal entities under this Article are allegedly unlawful searches in
the business premises, seizure of documents and the secret surveillance.
The key factor, which influences the question of applicability of the rights under
Article 8 to legal entities is a sufficiently direct link between the legal person as such
and the alleged breaches of the Convention. The rights in issue must belong to the
applicant legal entity, not to its members. In a number of cases the applications
were submitted to the Court by both natural and legal persons, where the applicant
individuals usually were members or the owners of the applicant associations or
companies. Very often they invoked a breach of Article 8 only in respect to individuals.
Such an approach may be explained by the fact that there is no doubt as to the
applicability of the rights envisaged by it to natural persons and, consequently, the
applicants preferred to avoid the risk of lodging probably inadmissible complaints.
The limited number of judgments under Article 8 regarding legal persons leads
us to the conclusion that the institute of the right to respect for private and family
life in relation to legal persons is at the stage of development. Most of the judgments
49
Centre for Legal Resources on behalf of Valentin Câmpeanu v. Romania
[GC], no. 47848/08, § 155,
17 July 2014.
50
Tinnelly & Sons Ltd and Others and McElduff and Others v. the United Kingdom
, 10 July 1998, § 87,
Reports of Judgments and Decisions
1998-IV.