Latest Version - Updated: 5 August 2021

EUFORES takes the protection of personal data seriously and has established procedures to ensure that we process it in accordance with the principles and requirements set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR).

This EUFORES privacy policy explains what personal data we collect, how we process it, and what rights you have. It covers personal data of individuals such as the EUFORES member MEPs, MPs and others working for our supporting member organisations, our project partners and other individuals with whom we engage in the course of our day-to-day interactions and in pursuing our role as a European parliamentary network promoting renewable energy sources and energy efficiency in the European Union.

EUFORES AISBL (located at Rue d'Arlon 63-65, 1040 Brussels, Belgium) is the data controller responsible for the processing of personal data described in this privacy policy.

What personal data we process and for which purposes

EUFORES membership

• What data we collect and how

When you or your organisation becomes a member of EUFORES, we collect information about you including, but not limited to, your name, position, organisation name, work address, email, and phone number, data related to your activities, including how you interact with us via correspondence or by attending our meetings, and any other data that you provide voluntarily. We store your personal data in our database.

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of administering membership, maintaining regular contacts, providing you with information (including policy updates, newsletters, publications, event invitations and press releases), managing your participation in committees, and EUFORES events, and providing you with other relevant membership services.

Activities, meetings, and events 

• What data we collect and how

We collect your personal data, including your name, contact details, your position, and your organisation name, when we organise meetings, as well as at conferences and other public events we organise alone or in cooperation with others or as part of an EU-funded project. Occasionally, we will collect additional information, such as your photo, your bio, or relevant ID card or passport details for security purposes when we organise the event at EU institutions’ premises or national parliaments. During our events, we may record your image, which we may post on our website, our YouTube channel and on our social media pages (Twitter & LinkedIn), or in our internal publications. Please let us know in advance if you object to us taking your photo or filming you or publishing your image by contacting us: eufores@eufores.org.

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest, for the purpose of registration and identification, sending you relevant practical information, as well as follow-up messages, such as satisfaction surveys and similar, for managing your participation in the event, for establishing statistics of attendees and for reporting purposes related to EU-funded projects. We keep a record of your participation in our events as an attendee or a speaker. When registering for our events, you will be given the choice to provide your consent to the use of your data for these purposes. You may manage your options at any time by contacting us at eufores@eufores.org.

Interactions with other stakeholders 

• What data we collect and how

We may obtain your personal data via many other day-to-day business interactions, such as when you contact us or we contact you to pursue our mission and objectives, when we receive your business card or your business details from you directly, from third parties, or from public available databases (this may include, for example, European and national institutions, business and other stakeholders’, prospective members, prospective sponsors, journalists).

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of keeping in touch with you, delivering on our mission, maintaining day-to-day business relationships, informing you about issues important for us, about our events or sending you our press releases.

Correspondence

• What data we collect and how

If you communicate with us by email, postal mail, or other form of communication, we may retain such correspondence and the information contained in, including your name, contact details, as well as the content of the communication. We may store such data in our Outlook address book (or similar software).

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of responding to you, keeping in touch, or keeping a record of our correspondence.

Service providers and business contracts 

• What data we collect and how

We may also obtain your personal data, including your name, contact details, your position, and your organisation’s name when your organisation provides goods and services to us, such as IT services, event management, catering, travel services, and similar.

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of performing the contract, enquiring about goods and services, procuring new contracts, keeping in touch to pursue rights and obligations and generally to manage our business relationship.

Project partners (EU or other public funding programmes, tenders, public procurement) 

• What data we collect and how

We may also obtain your personal data, including your name, contact details, your position, and your organisation’s name when your organisation becomes a project partner in the framework of EU or other funding programmes, tenders, public procurement.

• Legal basis and purpose

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of performing the contract of the project, for coordination and reporting purposes, keeping in touch to pursue rights and obligations and generally to manage the roll out of the actions defined in the project agreement.

Recruitment process and staff

• What data we collect and how

We may obtain your contact details as well as your education and professional history (including compensation & benefits information) during a recruitment process. This includes the information you may have posted on social networks which are accessible to the public, any other data you may insert in your cover letter and curriculum vitae, the content of our correspondence and our assessment of your application for the position. We may keep all this information during the recruitment process.

• Legal basis and purpose

Legitimate interest to seek the most adequate candidates for employment and necessity for contractual purposes. The purpose of this data is processing of your application, if you have applied for a vacant position, have sent a spontaneous application or have been contacted by us for recruitment purposes.

Cookies: information we collect automatically

What cookies do we use?

The cookies we use do not collect data that reveal your personal identity and therefore do not make it possible for us to identify you.

• Strictly necessary cookie

These cookies are essential for our website to function properly. They enable you to browse on our website and use its features.

• Performance cookies

We use Google Analytics to analyse the use of our website, for example, which pages are visited most often, or if some web pages issue error messages. This helps us improve your browsing experience. Google Analytics analyses your interaction with our website and stores information about for example pages visited and location of the users. Google provides certain privacy options and choices in this regard, which are described here.

• Social widgets

Our website or mailings have buttons that link to LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. The providers of these third-party social widgets may set cookies to collect information regarding our website or mailings users and their interactions with the social widgets. When you use these, you are bound by the terms and conditions and the privacy policy of these social media platforms.

How to give your consent and manage settings?

By continuing your visit on our website, you consent to our use of cookies as specified in this cookies policy.

With whom we share your personal data

We do not sell or otherwise disclose your personal data to third parties, unless you request it or consent to it, and except as described in this privacy policy. We may share your personal data with the following recipients:

• With third party service providers whom we engage to provide services

This may include data sharing services (such as WeTransfer) to transmit large files, email service providers to inform you about our events (such as Cleverreach), poll creation providers (such as Survey Monkey), online meeting or webinar providers (such as GoToMeeting, Zoom, Teams), image and video sharing services (such as YouTube), and other such similar service providers that we engage to provide technical support for carrying out our activities. While using these service providers we are sharing only the minimum data needed for the related service used by us. These providers may collect and track data and information to provide their services to us.

• With EUFORES members, event sponsors, project partners and events participants

in the context of EUFORES activities and events, for example in the form of a participants list and minutes from a EUFORES meeting, workshop or conference.

• With co-organisers or partners of our events or projects

while sharing only the minimum data needed, and only when it is absolutely necessary for the third party to carry out its roll and obligations linked to the event or the project it is co-organising.

How long we keep your personal data

We keep your personal data for as long as it is necessary to provide membership services, to pursue our mission, to maintain the relationship with you, or to perform a contract, incl. EU or public funded projects. As a general rule, we keep the record of your participation in our meetings and events for 5 years, unless we need to keep it longer as defined in EU or public funded project contracts or for other relevant purposes.

Data security

We use necessary technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal data against accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, or any other unlawful or unauthorised data processing. We have trained all EUFORES staff about the importance of maintaining the privacy and we will do so regularly.

Your rights

You have the right to know how we process your personal data (access). You have the right to request access to your personal data, and its correction in the event of inaccuracies. You also have the right to request to delete your personal data when such data is no longer relevant. Although you may request that your personal data be deleted at any time, we may have to retain certain personal data for contract performance purposes or other retention obligations.

In addition, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data and withdraw your consent at any time. You may object to us processing your personal data for direct mailing purposes, such as sending you event invitations, newsletters or other information. You may unsubscribe from our mailings via the means provided in the mailings we send or by contacting us on eufores@eufores.org. Please note that you may not be able to benefit from all our services if you request the deletion of your personal data, object to, or withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data.

Note that you have the right to receive the personal data you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format (data portability).

Finally, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Belgian Data Protection Authority.

If you do not wish that we share your personal data, please tell us at eufores@eufores.org.

Changes to this privacy policy

We may change this privacy policy from time to time. The most recent version will be available on our website and will include the date of its latest revision. All changes will be effective from that date. You should check our website to see the current privacy policy in force and any changes that may have been made to it.

How to contact us

If you have any questions, demands or complaints regarding our collection and processing of your personal data, please send us email at: eufores@eufores.org, or contact our Data Manager on jan.geiss@eufores.org.