The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human rights held Romania responsible for having failed in its obligations to protect an individual’s right to privacy when it didn't strike a fair balance between the applicant employee's rights and the rights of his employer. The applicant had been dismissed from his job at a private company after disciplinary proceedings in which his instant messaging communications sent from a workplace computer were read by the employer in order to corroborate that he had used the company’s property for personal purposes. The applicant brought a complaint before domestic courts claiming that his dismissal was unlawful given that his employer had violated his right to privacy by illegally monitoring his private communications. Both the Bucharest County Court and the Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled that the dismissal had been lawful. However, the Grand Chamber reasoned that the domestic courts had not properly considered all relevant elements and had therefore failed to strike a fair balance between the applicant’s and employer’s rights. Because of this, it concluded that Romania had not afforded adequate protection to the applicant’s right to respect for his private life and correspondence under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).