Nowadays, it is a tendency in European countries to widen the scope of protection of personality rights. In some countries, such as Germany, Austria, Netherlands, the traditional models of legal regulations, which restrict a possibility to invoke certain means of civil protection regarding the cases of infringement of personality rights are repudiated. The scope of application of non-pecuniary damage as a means of civil defense is being developed. European Court of Human Rights case-law, national court case-law and legislative authority – all have a great influence on developing a list of personality rights which is closely related not to physical, but to interior and psychological parameters of individual. The widening scope of protection of personality rights the main problem rise in competing in between with the rights themselves – how to find a fair balance between the equivalent rights which are ordained on the constitutional and international level in order to guarantee the effective protection of the personality rights.

The aim of the analysis is to characterize and analyze the main factors in more detail, which determine the scope and dynamics in the protection of personality rights, and to emphasize the problems of the protection of personality rights.

In the first part of the master thesis the author analyses the conception of personality rights, discusses the main state protected values, and the means of how to defense them as well as the possibility to prevent them from the infringement.

In the second part of the work the author characterizes and analyzes the main factors, which determine the widening of the protection of personality rights such as the human rights protection, economic, social and political integration, European Convention on Human Rights and constitutional horizontal effect in the practice of national court case-law. The work analyzes the right to protect the private life from the infringement of mass-media and the main problems connected with this protection right.

Raktažodžiai: personality rights, protection of rights, right to defence, fair balance, right to private life