A recent ruling of the Italian Supreme Court (Court of Cassation, Labour Section, No. 24204 of 29 August 2025) established that an employer who accesses the emails of former employees violates the right to the secrecy of correspondence.
The Court reaffirmed that even emails sent from employees’ personal accounts — although routed through company servers or sent from the employer’s premises — fall within the notions of “private life” and “correspondence,” protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Article 15 of the Italian Constitution.
Our Gaspare Roma and Ilaria Uletto examined the key aspects of the ruling and retraced the legal framework that led to this decision in an article published on NT+ Diritto by Il Sole 24 Ore.