Privacy: according to the ECHR it is legitimate to acquire the emails received from the partner to prove the betrayal

Ruling on a "Portuguese" case and on the legitimacy of the sentence with which the judges had acquitted a man, denounced by his wife for having appropriated some compromising e-mails that proved his wife's flirtations with other men known on some dating sites, e-mails of which had had the availability after having illegally accessed her ex's e-mail box and which she had then used as proof of the betrayal in the divorce case that followed and to oppose the request for shared custody of the children, the Court of Strasbourg unanimously held that the right to privacy of women, protected by art. 8 ECHR.

The Court found, inter alia, that the effects of the disclosure of those e-mails on the applicant's private life had been limited, since they had only been produced in civil proceedings; public access to files in these types of proceedings was limited.

The Court further noted that the emails in question had not even been examined, as the Lisbon Family Affairs Court had not actually ruled on the merits of her husband's claims.

According to the Court, the Portuguese authorities had compared the interests at stake in compliance with the criteria set out in the case law of the ECHR.

Furthermore, given that the applicant had renounced any civil action in the criminal proceedings, the only question that remained to be decided was that of the criminal responsibility of the ex-husband, a question on which the Court could not rule.

The Portuguese State thus fulfilled its positive obligation to protect the applicant's rights to respect for her private life and the confidentiality of her correspondence.