NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

the matter under Articles 8 and 10 concurrently. As a result, it therefore concluded that there had been a breach of both of these Articles of the Convention. 742 This conclusion was based on the fact that the domestic law did not provide safeguards appropriate to the use of powers of surveillance against journalists with a view to discovering their journalistic sources. The applicants further argued that the order to surrender the original documents intended to make a positive identification of the journalistic source possible, and by this means violated their freedom to impart information as guaranteed by Article 10 of the Convention. The Court confirmed these allegations and found a violation of this provision in respect of the applicant company. Although the Court did not rule on a violation of Article 8 of the Convention in respect of the applicant legal entity, in view of the close connection between Articles 8 and 10 in the present case, it is necessary to mention this case in the category of cases concerning the rights of legal entities to respect for their ‘home’ and correspondence. Retention of information obtained through undercover surveillance was also the key issue in the case of Association “21 December 1989” and Others v. Romania. 743 The Court found a violation of Article 8 here as well. 744 The finding of an infringement again concerned only a natural person, not the applicant company. This case related to the anti-government demonstrations throughout Romania in December 1989, around the time when the head of state, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was overthrown. The first applicant was the Association “21 December 1989”, an association that supported the interests of victims in criminal proceedings concerning killings, gunshot wounds and the ill treatment of several thousand people in various Romanian towns as a result of the demonstrations. The second applicant, Mr Mărieş, took part in the anti-government demonstrations in Bucharest in December 1989. In the present case, the Court did not deal with the status of the applicant association, as far as the complaints under Article 8 of the Convention were raised solely by the second applicant. He submitted that he had been subjected to secret surveillance measures, particularly telephone tapping. In his opinion, those measures served as means of pressure exerted by the authorities in connection with his activity as the president of the association. When finding a breach of the right to private life, the Court observed that the domestic legislation lacked safeguards to guarantee that information obtained through secret surveillance was destroyed as soon as it was no longer needed. In this case, as of 2006, the intelligence services were still holding the information about the applicant that they had gathered in 1990, that is, sixteen years later. In the case of Saarekallas OÜ and Others v. Estonia , 745 the complaint was submitted by Saarekallas OÜ, a private limited company registered in Estonia, and seven Finnish nationals. All of the applicants together made allegations under Article 8 that

742 Telegraaf Media Nederland Landelijke Media B.V., cited above, § 102. 743 Association “21 December 1989”, cited above.

744 Romania: Human rights court backing for Communist-era crackdown victims (online). URL: accessed 20 July 2015. 745 Saarekallas OÜ (dec.), cited above.

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