The concept of private life is very widely understood in the Court’s case-law and it can be said that it covers all aspects of life. Private life is thus a broad concept that has no exhaustive definition, and it may “embrace multiple aspects of the person’s physical and social identity”. The Court’s case-law, however, provides guidance as to the meaning and scope of private life for the purposes of Article 8.

Often private life is connected to and overlapping other rights protected by Article 8, namely with the protection of family life, home and correspondence. In many cases the Court has not considered it necessary to make a distinction between the scope of each of these concepts. The concept of private life has not been limited to cover only protection of private life at home, but it also covers the right to create and develop relationships with people outside of one’s home sphere, for example in working life. On the other hand, the private life limb of Article 8 does not guarantee a right to be in contact with a particular person in respect of whom the person seeking contact is not leading a family life and where the person to be contacted does not wish to have contact with that person.

In order to be examined as a possible violation under Article 8, the matter needs to reach certain de minimis level of seriousness. Article 8 does not protect every conceivable personal choice. The level of seriousness was not reached, for example, in Gough v. the United Kingdom where a person had been convicted for walking naked in public and he appeared naked in the court room. The Court found that, although the applicant had voluntarily chosen such a way of living, his choice was not supported in any known democratic society in the world.

The level of severity was not reached in Vučina v. Croatia either, where a picture of the applicant among a concert audience had been published in a magazine and the caption had mistakenly identifi ed her as the mayor’s wife.