Privacy policy

GENERAL PRIVACY POLICY

We take the protection of your personal data seriously, and use our best efforts 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 Cooperatives Europe policy explains what personal data we collect from you, how we process it, and what rights you have. It covers personal data of individuals working for our member organisations and other individuals with whom we engage in the course of our business interactions and in pursuing our role in representing the cooperative enterprises in Europe.

Cooperatives Europe is the European regional office of the International Co-operative Alliance and acts for cooperative enterprises in Europe. Cooperatives Europe (ASBL) operates under the Belgian Law and is the data controller of personal data described in this privacy policy.

You may contact us through:

Our address:
Cooperatives Europe asbl
105 ave Milcamps
Brussels, 1000
Belgium

Operational address
4 rue du Trône
1000 Brussels

Phone number: +32 2 213 00 80
Contact email: please contact us at this address.

WHAT PERSONAL DATA AND FOR WHICH PURPOSE

Members of Cooperatives Europe

When your organization becomes a member of Cooperatives Europe, we collect information about you including name, position, organization name, work address, email, and phone number, data related to the activities, including how you interact with us via correspondence or by attending our meetings, and any other data that you provide voluntarily. We store these data in our database.

In case of meetings or event, as well as at conferences and other public events we organize alone or in cooperation with others, we may occasionally collect additional information, such as photo, bio, or relevant ID card or passport details for security purposes when we organize the event at EU institutions’ premises. During our events, we may record image, which we may post on our website, on our social media page, or in our internal publications.

Our communication aims to help you take part of our work and keep you up to date with our activities. We process the personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of administering membership. Your personal information may be used to contact you for research, statistical information, follow-up, and networking within the cooperative movement. We also send communication based on your interests, your activity and role in Cooperatives Europe, information about our work and achievements, such as newsletters, press releases, invitations to events, campaigns and marketing, and other relevant content. We may use your data to analyse our performance (for example popularity of content in our newsletter). We may contact you to ensure that your details are kept up to date. You will receive specific content (internal communication) related to the services we offer through membership. We keep a record of your participation in our events as an attendee or a speaker. When registering for our events, you may be given a choice to opt-in to receive more information about the events we organize.

Interactions with stakeholders

We may obtain your personal data via many other business interactions, such as when you contact us or we contact you to pursue our mission and business 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, or journalists.

We process your personal data based on legitimate interest for the purpose of keeping in touch with you, informing you about issues important for us, about our policy positions invitations to events, campaigns and other relevant content. We may use your data to analyze our performance (for example number of visits to the website). We may contact you to ensure that your details are kept up to date.

Service providers

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

Correspondence

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 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.

Cookies

We use cookies on our website which help us improve it.

A cookie is a small text file that is downloaded onto your device when you access a website. It allows the website to track certain statistical information such as number of visits and clicks on the website and record user’s preferences when browsing. We use cookies to track the performance of our website and use the statistics to enhance the services provided through the website. This data is collected anonymously through Google Analytics. Our website features third party material such as social media plug-ins and videos. The cookies set by their operators are not in our control. Please refer to the privacy policies of the social media third parties.

Find out more about cookies on http://www.allaboutcookies.org/ where you will find information about blocking and deleting the cookies.

SHARING PERSONAL DATA

We do not sell or otherwise disclose your personal data to third parties. Your data is private.

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 Mail Chimp and Survey Monkey which are based in the U.S. and are certified under the EU-US Privacy Shield), image and video sharing services (such as Flickr, and YouTube), and other such similar service providers that we engage to provide technical support for carrying out our activities.

Cooperatives Europe website includes links to third-party websites, including the websites of our members. These websites are not managed by Cooperatives Europe. Any personal data you provide on such third-party websites is subject to their privacy policies. We are not responsible for the practices and policies of such third-party websites. Please read their respective privacy policies for more information.

SECURITY

The data we store is not published, sold, or shared with anyone outside Cooperatives Europe’s structures and partners. Information provided through cookies about your browsing session of our website is anonymized, meaning that we cannot identify your person directly and instead work with numbers and statistics for a general overview.

We have taken reasonable precautions to ensure security of your data, the security of our servers, and knowledge of data handling by our staff. Our contacts are password protected, stored on a secure server that is accessible only to the staff and IT providers of Cooperatives Europe.
YOU CONTROL YOUR DATA

You have the right to amend your data, request information we hold about you, transfer your data, request deletion, and the right to be forgotten. If your data is processed under legitimate interest, you may still request to remove your data, however in some cases we may refuse your request on legal basis.  All requests will be dealt with in a timely manner. You may also submit a complaint to [email protected] or the data protection agency. 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.

HOW LONG WE KEEP 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. We will keep your personal data when you have left a member organisation or have changed positions, in order to engage with you in another capacity or to maintain the relationship.

As a general rule, we keep the record of your participation in our meetings and events for two years, unless we need to keep it longer, including for archiving purposes, for the purpose of complying with competition law, or for other relevant purposes.

PRIVACY DISCLAIMER FOR EVENTS

Cooperatives Europe processes your personal data such as your name, your organization and position, your contact details, and other relevant personal data for the purpose of organizing the event, registering you, sending you relevant practical information prior to the event, as well as follow- up messages after the event, such as satisfaction surveys, and similar. During the events, we may record your image and make it public. Please let us know in advance if you object to it. We may share your personal data with our event partners and service providers whom we engage to organize events. You have the right to access, modify, object to the use, restrict the processing, ask for the erasure and portability of your personal data. Please check our General Privacy Policy (make “privacy policy a hyperlink) for further details.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY 

We will aim to review our privacy policy from time to time and will update this page when necessary.

Last updated: January 2022