The European Court of Human Rights on 20th November 2025, delivered its judgment in the case of Rjabinins and Others v. Latvia , finding a violation of the rights guaranteed by Article 8 (right to respect for private life and correspondence) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (the Convention) taken separately and in conjunction with Article 13 (right to an effective remedy).
The case, which dates back more than a decade in Latvia, and has been lodged with the European Court for five years, arose from three complaints by the applicants concerning the monitoring of mobile telephone communications as part of a criminal investigation, which they learned about by chance, and the failure to challenge the investigating judge’s decisions to authorise the tapping of their telephone conversations.
The Court concluded that there had been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention taken separately and in conjunction with Article 13 in respect of all three applicants. The Court awarded each applicant 2,500 euros in compensation for non-pecuniary damage. The applicants had asked for 5,000 euros each as a suitable penalty.
“The orders issued by the investigating judge lacked sufficient detail. It is not apparent from the wording of the orders how the investigating judge applied the “necessity” test… There is no indication in the orders issued by the investigating judge or in any other material before the Court that the investigating judge considered whether the investigation could be conducted by other, less intrusive, means,” said the ECHR judgment.
“In addition, the orders made by the investigating judge were identical in respect of all three applicants… despite their different statuses in the proceedings at the time,” the ECHR added. “The Court notes thus the absence of sufficiently individualised assessment in respect of each applicant. Nor did the orders contain references to specific facts or information justifying the necessity of such drastic measures against each applicant. Although the investigating judge appears to have had access to the case file submitted by the police investigator, it is not clear from the orders which information, material or facts emanating from the case file were taken into consideration in finding the request justified. The prior authorisation process therefore failed to guarantee the necessity and proportionality of the surveillance measures in respect of each of the applicants,” it said.
The full text of the Court’s judgment of 20 November, plus a summary of the circumstances of the case, is available in the Court’s online database here.
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