Data Protection Notice for BlueInvest

Data protection notice

BlueInvest Platform - Online Contact Form

under the European, Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF)

In accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of 23 October 2018 on data protection (hereinafter the Regulation), the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (hereafter CINEA) collects your personal data only to the extent necessary to fulfil the precise purpose related to its tasks.

1. The controller is: 

The European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) 

Chaussée de Wavre 910 – BLS2 5/259 

B-1049 Brussels 

CINEA Unit D3 – Sustainable Blue Economy 

Person responsible for the processing: Head of Unit D3 

Email: CINEA-EMFAF-CONTRACTSec [dot] europa [dot] eu (CINEA-EMFAF-CONTRACTS[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

2. The purpose of the processing is for CINEA and its contractor PriceWaterhouseCoopers EU Services EESV([1]), acting as data processor, to answer queries submitted through the “Contact Us” form of the web page BlueInvest. The objective of the BlueInvest initiative is to help small enterprises to put innovative products and services from the blue economy on the market and increase investment in the sustainable blue economy in the EU. This processing includes:

• Management of queries submitted through the ‘Contact Us’ form.

     

3.  The data subjects concerned by this notice are:

• Website users, individuals, BlueInvest stakeholders filling out the online contact form to submit their inquiry and/or comment.

   

4. The categories of personal data collected and used for the processing operations are:

• Name;
• Email address;
• Any other personal data you may provide in the context of your inquiry.

The provision of personal data other than the email address and name is not mandatory and will only be processed if you choose voluntarily, by your own decision, to mention them in the contact form.

Personal data will not be used for an automated decision-making including profiling and will not be transferred outside the European Economic Area.

When visiting the BlueInvest  web page, on the Maritime Forum website, you have the option to not accept cookies in which case your browser history is not kept. If you opt to accept cookies, the browser history of your visit will be kept for a maximum of 6 months. This information will then be deleted. The collection, aggregation and anonymising operations are performed in the data centre of the European 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.

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 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 not wish for your personal data to be utilised for our anonymised, aggregated statistics, you can opt out of this on our cookies page. In particular, you can control and/or delete those cookies as you wish. Please refer to the cookies policy of the Commission at https://ec.europa.eu/info/cookies_en.

5. All recipients are on a "need to know" basis. The recipients to whom the personal data will or might be disclosed are:

• Authorised staff of CINEA and of the European Commission (DG MARE) involved in the BlueInvest Platform initiative;
• CINEA contractor’s authorised staff in charge of performing and managing the online contact form.

In case of audits or proceedings, personal data may be provided to amongst others, to CINEA’s Internal Controller, Data Protection Officer and Legal Sector.

In addition, data may be disclosed to public authorities in accordance with Union and Member State law such as the European Court of Justice or a national judge as well as the lawyers and the agents of the parties in case of legal proceedings; the Investigation and Disciplinary Office of the European Commission (IDOC); the competent Appointing Authority in case of a request or a complaint lodged under Article 90 of the Staff Regulations; the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF); the Internal Audit Service of the European Commission; the European Court of Auditors; the European Ombudsman; the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Your personal data will not be transferred to third countries or international organisations.

6. Data subjects’ rights

You have the right to access your personal data and to request your personal data to be rectified if the data is inaccurate or incomplete. Where applicable, you have the right to request restriction or to object to processing, to request a copy or erasure of your personal data held by the data controller. If processing is based on consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing based on the consent you gave before its withdrawal.

You can exercise your rights by sending an email to CINEA-EMFAF-CONTRACTSec [dot] europa [dot] eu (CINEA-EMFAF-CONTRACTS[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) with the requested change(s) to the controller

Your request to exercise any one of the above rights will be dealt with without undue delay and within one month. 

The processing of your data will not include automated decision-making (such as profiling).

7. How do we protect your personal data

All personal data in electronic format (emails, documents, databases, uploaded batches of data, etc.) are stored on the servers of the European Commission and/or of CINEA’s processor. All processing operations within the Commission and CINEA 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 European Commission. 

In order to protect your personal data, CINEA 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 unauthorized 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 processor is bound by a specific contractual clause for any processing operations of your personal data on behalf of the data controllers. The processor has put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the required level of security. For more information, please consult the processor privacy statement: Privacy statement | PwC Belgium.

8. The legal basis of the processing is:

Article 5(1)(a) of the Regulation: processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, including for the management and functioning of CINEA;

Article 5(1)(d) of the Regulation: personal data may be processed based on data subjects’ consent.

9. The time limits for keeping the data are the following:

CINEA only keeps your personal data for the time necessary to fulfil the purpose of the survey and in accordance with the 2022 Commission Retention List ([2]).

The retention period for website related data is two years. Queries sent via the contact form on the BlueInvest page are kept as long as needed to process the request and immediately deleted when the request is closed. 

The personal data may be further processed for historical, statistical or scientific purposes. 

10. Whereto find more information

Any queries concerning the processing of personal data may be addressed to the Data controller referenced on page one of this notice. 

Data subjects shall have the right of recourse at any time to CINEA’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) at CINEA-DPOec [dot] europa [dot] eu (CINEA-DPO[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu) and to the European Data Protection Supervisor at https://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.

The DPO keeps a register of all the processing operations on personal data carried out by CINEA, that can be accessed via the following link: https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/about-us/data-protection/public-central-register-data-protection_en

This specific processing operation has been included in CINEA record 2021-003/R1-COMM-02.

More information on processing your personal data with regard to cookies stored by Europa Analytics is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00685. You may access the register via the following link: http://ec.europa.eu/dpo-register. 

([1])   The privacy policy of the contractor can be found at: Privacy statement | PwC Belgium

([2])   The common Commission-level retention list SEC(2022)400 for European Commission files (CRL) is a regulatory document in the form of a retention schedule that sets the retention periods and follow-up actions for the different types of Commission files.