Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Why and how do we process your personal data?
3. On what legal ground(s) do we process your personal data?
4. Which personal data do we collect and further process?
5. How long do we keep your personal data?
6. How do we protect and safeguard your personal data?
7. Who has access to your personal dataand to whom is it disclosed?
8. What are your rights and how can you exercise them?
9. Contact information
10. Where to find more detailed information?
    

• 1. Introduction

The European Commission (hereafter ‘the Commission’) is committed to protect your personal data and to respect your privacy. The Commission collects and further processes personal data pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.

This privacy statement explains the reason for the processing of your personal data in the context of a meeting or event organised by Directorate General for Structural Reform Support of the Commission (hereafter ‘DG REFORM’). It explains the way we collect, handle and ensure protection of all personal data provided, how that information is used and what rights you have in relation to your personal data. It also specifies the contact details of the responsible Data Controller with whom you may exercise your rights, the Data Protection Officer and the European Data Protection Supervisor.

2. Why and how do we process your personal data?

Purpose of the processing operation: The Commission collects and uses your personal data to provide you with information linked to meetings and events for the “Capacity Building on Environment” (Environment for Cyprus) (before, during and after).

Audio-visual recording of the speakers, organisers and participants, as well as photographs of the speakers and panoramic photographs of participants and organisers at the event or meeting will be taken and published in the context of the event or meeting at a site or place linked to the meeting or event.

The audience or non-speaker participants are not photographed individually or in groups. They may however appear on panoramic photographs of the whole event/audience.

Participants that do not wish to be part of the above recording/publishing activities have the possibility to object to processing (e.g. by sitting in back rows which are not recorded/photographed, by wearing special badges, by attending the meeting/event in a separate room without web-streaming, etc.).

Your personal data will not be used for an automated decision-making, including profiling.

3. On what legal ground(s) do we process your personal data?

The processing operations on personal data linked to the organisation, management, follow-up and promotion of the meeting or event (including newsletters, [web-streaming], photos, audio-visual recording]) are necessary for the management and functioning of the Commission, as mandatedby the Treaties.Those provisions are in particular Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Consequently, those processing operations are lawful under Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the Union institution or body)

Your consent is required for the following actions during the meeting or event:

• Publication of your photos and videos on the website;
• Your dietary requirements and/or access requirements;
• The list of participants to the meeting or event containing your name and affiliation will be shared with other participants. In addition, further information will be shared for specific purposes (e.g. future collaboration, creation of working groups);]
• Invitations to future meetings or events that the Commission may organise;
• Subscription to a newsletter of the Commission.

If you opt-in, you are giving us your explicit consent under Article 5(1)(d) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 to process your personal data for those specificpurposes.You can give your consent via a clear affirmative act by ticking the box(es) on the online registration form.

Your consent can be withdrawn at any time and detailed information on how to withdraw consent can be found under heading 8.

4. Which personal data do we collect and further process?

• The following personal data may be processed in the context of the meeting or event::
  Contact details (function/title, first name, last name, name of organisation, city, e-mail address, IP address, telephone number);
• Nationality, passport or identity card number and its date of issue and expiry date may be collected, so that the data subjects may obtain access to the premises where the meeting/event is held;
• Financial information (such as a payment card number or bank account) may be collected for the payment of fees of the meeting/event or for possible reimbursements;
• Dietary requests (if any) orspecific access requirements. 

5. How long do we keep your personal data?

DG REFORMonly keeps your personal data for the time necessary to fulfil the purpose of collection or further processing.

For each of the categories of personal data that may be processed, please find below the retention details and the reference to the relevant record of processing:

• Personal data related to the organisation and management of the meeting or event (this includes the information given during the registration, before, during or after the event) will be kept for 5 years after the meeting or event. Financialinformationwill be kept for a longer period (10 years in case of financial transactions or7 years for auditing purposes).
• Sensitive personal data relating to dietary and/or access requirements will be deleted as soon as they are no longer necessary for the purpose for which they have been collected in the framework of the meeting or event, but no later than within 1 month after the end of the meeting or event.
• Recordings from the web-streamed meeting or event will be kept for 2 years before being deleted. More information is available in the record of processing DPR-EC-00306 (Web-streaming of Commission events).
• In case of audio-visual recording of the meeting or event, the recordings will be kept for 3 months after the meeting or event before being deleted. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-01937 (Audio-visual recording of meetings).
• Personal data shared with the Directorate-General for Human Resources and Security of the Commission for the participants to gain access to Commission buildings is kept for 6 months after the termination of the link between the data subject and the Commission. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00655 (Commission Physical Access Control System (PACS)).
• Personal data shared with DG REFORM for future mailing purposes (e.g. for receiving newsletters or invitations to similar events) are processed in line with the Record of Processing DPR-EC-03928 (Management of subscriptions to receive information) and the specific privacy statement prepared.
• Selected service providers for organisational purposes (such as caterers, travel agents or event management organisations) are contractually bound to process personal data on behalf of and in line with the instructions of DG REFORM, keep confidential any data they process and protect it from unauthorised access, use and retention.

6. How do we protect and safeguard your personal data?

All personal data in electronic format (e-mails, documents, databases, uploaded batches of data, etc.) are stored on the servers of the Commission (or of its contractors, if contractors are engaged to assist the controller in the organisation and management of a specific meeting or event). All processing operations are carried out pursuant to Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January 2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the Commission.

In order to protect your personal data, the Commission has put in place a number of technical and organisational measures. Technical measures include appropriate actions to address online security, risk of data loss, alteration of data or unauthorised access, taking into consideration the risk presented by the processing and the nature of the personal data being processed. Organisational measures include restricting access to the personal data solely to authorised persons with a legitimate need to know for the purposes of this processing operation.

The Commission’s data processors (contractors) are bound by specific contractual clauses for any processing operations of your personal data on behalf of the Commission.The processors have to put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the level of security required by the Commission.

7. Who has access to your personal data and to whom is it disclosed?

Access to your personal data is provided to the Commission staff responsible for carrying out this processing operation and to other authorised Commission staff according to the “need to know” principle. Such staff abide by statutory, and when required, additional confidentiality agreements.

DG REFORM uses (a)service provider(s) (processor(s)) to assist the controller in the organisation of aspecific meeting or event. DG REFORM may also share your information with the service provider(s) for the purposes of organising the meeting/event. The service provider(s) are the following:Stantec sa/nv as data processor and Cocoon as data sub-processor in charge of the design and maintenance of the website.

• 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 (functional cookies) or for gathering statistics (analytical cookies).

If registration for the meeting or event takes place via a Commission website,the cookies employed by the Commission on the registrant’s device for that purpose will be covered by the cookies policy of the Commission.

When you visit the website(s) of the meeting or event and when you register, we will indicate in the specific privacy statement how long we will keep the browser history of your visit. This information will then be deleted. The collection, aggregation and anonymising operations are performed in the data centre of the Commission under adequate security measures.

Cookies are stored by Europa Analytics, the corporate service which measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the European Commission’s websites on EUROPA. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00685 (Europa Analytics).

Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you do that, some features of the meeting/event website may not work as intended.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify data subjects personally and the pattern data is fully under the Commission’s control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.

Should you wish to opt your personal data out of our anonymised, aggregated statistics, you can do so on our cookies page. In particular, you can control and/or delete those cookies as you wish.

Third party IT tools, includingsocial media

We may use third party IT tools to inform about and promote the meeting or eventthrough widely used communication channels, including social media. For detailed information about the use of social media by the European Commission, see the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00073 (Social Media Use by the European Commission).

You may be able to watch our videos, which may be also uploaded to one of our social media pages and follow links from our website to other relevant social media.

In order to protect your privacy, our use of third party IT tools to connect to those services does not set cookies when our website pages are loaded on your computer (or other devices),nor are you immediately redirected to those social media or other websites. Only in the event that you click on a button or “play” on a video to watch it, a cookie of the social media company concerned will be installed on your device. If you do not click on any social media buttons or videos, no cookies will be installed on your device by third parties.

In order to view such third-party content on our websites, a message will alert you that you need to accept those third parties’ specific Terms and Conditions, including their cookie policies, over which the Commission has no control.

We recommend that users carefully read the relevant privacy policiesof the social media tools used. These explain each company’s policy of personal data collection and further processing, their use of data, users’ rights and the ways in which users can protect their privacy when using those services.

The use of a third party IT tooldoes not in any way imply that the Commission endorses them or their privacy policies. In the event that one or more third party IT tools are occasionally unavailable, we accept no responsibility for lack of service due to their downtime. 

8. What are your rights and how can you exercise them?

You have specific rights as a ‘data subject’ under Chapter III (Articles 14-25) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, in particular the right to access, your personal data and to rectify them in case your personal data are inaccurate or incomplete. Where applicable, you have the right to erase your personal data, to restrict the processing of your personal data, to object to the processing, and the right to data portability.

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data, which is lawfully carried out pursuant to Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 on grounds relating to your particular situation.

The Commission will ensure that you can exercise their right to object to processing whenever possible by the organisers of the meeting or event (for example, on the spot by indicating a non-web streamed seat if requested; or ex-post, by deleting a specific sequence from the online video/voice recording).

If you have given your consent pursuant to Article 5(1)(d) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, you will be able to withdraw your consent at any time by notifying the data controller (please see heading 9). The withdrawal of your consent will not affect the lawfulness of the processing carried out before you have withdrawn the consent.

You can exercise your rights by contacting the data controller, or in case of conflict the Data Protection Officer of the Commission. If necessary, you can also address the European Data Protection Supervisor. Their contact information is given under Heading 9 below.

Where you wish to exercise your rights in the context of one or several specific processing operations, please provide their description (i.e. their Record reference(s) as specified under Heading 10 below) in your request.

9. Contact information

• The Data Controller

If you would like to exercise your rights (e.g. to withdraw your consent for data processing) under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, or if you have comments, questions or concerns, or if you would like to submit a complaint regarding the processing of your personal data, please feel free to contact the Data Controller via email: <REFORM-DATA-PROTECTION@ec.europa.eu>.

• The Data Protection Officer (DPO) of the Commission

You may contact the Data Protection Officer <DATA-PROTECTION-OFFICER@ec.europa.eu>with regard to issues related to the processing of your personal data under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.

• The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS)

You have the right to have recourse (i.e. you can lodge a complaint) to the European Data Protection Supervisor<edps@edps.europa.eu>if you consider that your rights under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 have been infringed as a result of the processing of your personal data by the data controller.

10. Where to find more detailed information?

The Commission Data Protection Officer (DPO) publishes the register of all processing operations on personal data by the European Commission, which have been documented and notified to him. You may access the register via the following link: <https://ec.europa.eu/dpo-register/>.

This specific processing operation has been included in the DPO’s public register with the following Record reference:DPR-EC-01063.