Data Protection Notice

One of your rights under EU law is that you must be informed when your personal data - also known as personal information - is processed (collected, used, stored) by any organization. You also have the right to know the details and purpose of that processing.

Some of the services offered on our website require the processing of your personal data. In such cases, links are available on those pages directing you to the specific information about the processing contained in the relevant data protection notices.

Here we give you a general overview of some of the ways this website processes your personal data including the use of cookies and social media.

Your personal data and our website

  • We collect your personal information only to the extent necessary to fulfill a precise purpose related to our tasks;
  • We will use your personal data for direct marketing purposes;
  • We do not reuse the information for another purpose that is different from the one stated;
  • We put in place measures to guarantee that your data are kept up-to-date and processed securely;
  • Under certain conditions outlined in law, we may disclose your information to third parties, (such as the European Anti-Fraud Office, the Court of Auditors, or law enforcement authorities) if it is necessary and proportionate for lawful, specific purposes;
  • You have the right to access your personal information, to have it corrected, and the right to recourse; at any time if you believe your data protection rights have been breached;
  • We do not keep your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes for which we collected it;
  • However, we may keep your information for a longer period for historical, statistical, or scientific purposes with the appropriate safeguards in place.

Cookies

Cookies are short text files stored on a user’s device (such as a computer, tablet, or phone) by a website.

Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website or for gathering statistics.

Cookies are also typically used to provide a more personalized experience for a user for example when an online service remembers your user profile without you having to log in.

When you visit our website, we may collect some data on your browsing experience such as your IP address, the website page you visited, when you visited, and the website page you were redirected from.

This information is used to gather aggregated and anonymous statistics with a view to improving our services and enhancing your user experience.

When you visit this website, we will keep the browser history of your visit for a maximum of 13 months. This information will then be deleted.

Should you wish to opt your data out of our anonymized, aggregated statistics, you can do so here.

Read our cookies information for more information about the types of cookies this website uses.

Social Media

We use social media to present our work through widely used and contemporary channels.

Our use of social media is highlighted on this website.

For instance, you can watch videos, which we upload to our YouTube page and follow links from our website to Google, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Cookies are not set by our display of social media buttons to connect to those services when our website pages are loaded on your computer (or other devices) or from components from those services embedded in our web pages.

Each social media channel has its own policy on the way they process your personal data when you access their sites. For example, if you choose to watch one of our videos on YouTube, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept YouTube cookies; if you look at our Twitter activity on Twitter, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept Twitter cookies; the same applies for Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

If you have any concerns or questions about their use of your personal data, you should read their privacy policies carefully before using them.

Complaint handling

What kinds of personal data does the website process?

We process the personal data submitted by website visitors. This will include names, contact details as well as the content of the allegations (insofar as the latter qualify as personal data).

Who may receive my personal data?

The case file containing your personal data is accessible to relevant members of our staff. All-access to case files is logged.

What are my rights?

You are entitled to access the personal data we hold about you and to have them rectified where necessary. In certain cases, you also have the right to have your data blocked or erased or to object to their processing. For more information, please see Articles 13 to 19 of the Regulation.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using our contact form. We will reply within three months. Please note that in some cases restrictions under Article 20 of the Regulation may apply.

How long do you keep my data?

We keep log files - including your personal data - for up to two years.

Who can I contact?

You can contact us as follows:

  • You can find complete contact information on the website contact page.

We use cookies on our website for its technical functioning and for gathering statistics. A cookie is a small piece of data that a website stores on the visitor’s computer or mobile device.

The table on this page lists the cookies that this website uses and describes its purpose.

You will also find some more detail here about cookies relating to our social media channels and Google Analytics, the service we use for our statistics.

Social media cookies

We use social media platforms. Our presence in the Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, and LinkedIn communities strengthens our online presence and visibility.

  • The website does not set cookies with the display of links to our social media channels when you are browsing our website;
  • You can watch videos, which we upload (embed) to our YouTube page. You can also follow links from our website to social media platforms;
  • In order to watch a video on our website, a message will alert you that you need to accept YouTube cookies to do so. YouTube has its own cookie and privacy policies over which we have no control. There is no installation of cookies from YouTube until you consent to YouTube cookies;

Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States.

In case of activation of the IP anonymization, Google will truncate/anonymize the last octet of the IP address for Member States of the European Union as well as for other parties to the Agreement on the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases, the full IP address is sent to and shortened by Google servers in the USA.

On behalf of the website provider, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators, and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage to the website provider. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. However, we point out that if you do this, you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website.

Opting out

By default, the browsing experience of website visitors is tracked by Google Analytics in order to produce anonymized statistics.

Furthermore, you can prevent Google’s collection and use of data (cookies and IP address) by downloading and installing the browser plug-in available under https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en. Please note that on this website, Google Analytics code is supplemented by “gat._anonymizeIp();” to ensure an anonymized collection of IP addresses (so-called IP-masking).

Do not track preferences

Do not track is a function that allows visitors to opt-out from being tracked by websites for any purpose including the use of analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms. Do not track options are available in a number of browsers including:

If you enable do not track in your web browser, Google Analytics will respect your choice. You will not be tracked. This is in addition to you opting-out of the aggregation and analysis of data for our website statistics;

If you have disabled all cookies from your browser, we will still collect some general data about your browsing (e.g. a record of a visitor to our website) but they will be less accurate and your visit will not be tracked.