Privacy Statement

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 of 23 October 2018 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 (repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001). 

This privacy statement explains the reason for the processing of your personal data, 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. 

The information in relation to processing operation ‘You are EU’ undertaken by Directorate General for Communication, Directorate B – Strategy and Corporate Communication, Unit B1 (COMM.B1) is presented below.

The purpose of the processing is to facilitate the communication activities of the ‘You are EU’ campaign. 

‘You are EU’ is an EU-wide communication campaign that aims to reaffirm the EU’s commitment to Europe’s energy independence, reassert EU solidarity with Ukraine, and remind Europeans of the common values that unite them, such as peace, freedom and democracy. The campaign is disseminated across various channels and all 24 official EU languages. It is managed by the Directorate-General for Communication of the European Commission. 

For the purposes of this campaign and the fulfilment of communication services vis-à-vis citizens, namely with regard to renewable energies and the war in Ukraine, the Commission processes personal data. 

More specifically, pictures and video images may be used as part of the communication campaign. This campaign may include press advertisements, out-of-home advertisements, social media, written articles on websites, and various media outlets in any of the 24 EU official languages. 

We may also use external contractors to perform surveys, assessing the results and outreach of the campaigns. More information on how we ensure the data protection compliance of our contractors can be found under Heading 6 of this privacy statement. Your personal data will not be used for an automated decision-making including profiling.

The processing operations on personal data, linked to communication on the ‘You are EU’ campaign are necessary for the performance of the European Commission’s tasks carried out in the public interest, as foreseen in Article 11 and Article 13 of the Treaty on European Union and in 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 Alternatively, for some of the processing activities we will ask for your consent in accordance with Article 5(1)(d) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.

In order to carry out this processing operation, in the context of the ‘You are EU’ campaign, the data categories processed are the following: 

• Personal data of persons that appear in videos and photographs of the campaign: first name, last name, place of residence, and image and voice recorded in videos and photographs.

The Data Controller only keeps your personal data for the time necessary to fulfil the purpose of collection or further processing. 

5.1. Personal data collected for the ‘You are EU’ campaign

Personal data will be kept for a maximum period of 12 (twelve) months after the ‘You are EU’ campaign ends. Data collected in the course of the campaign will be automatically deleted at the end of this period. 

5.2. Documents (reports, correspondence, financial information etc.) 

All paper and electronic documents containing personal data archived according to the Common Commission Level Retention List (SEC(2019)900/2) for a period of 10 (ten) years with the application of sampling and selection techniques. 

5.3. Personal data available via audio-visual content 

Selected audio-visual content may be archived for permanent preservation, in line with the provisions of the Common Commission Level Retention List (SEC(2019)900/2), for historical purposes to document, preserve and make available the history and audio-visual heritage of the Commission and the European Union.

All personal data in electronic format (e-mails, documents, databases, uploaded batches of data, etc.) are stored either on the servers of the European Commission or of its contractors. All processing operations are carried out pursuant to the Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January 2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the European Commission. 

The Commission’s contractors are bound by a specific contractual clause for any processing operations of your data on behalf of the Commission, and by the confidentiality obligations deriving from the transposition of the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU Member States (‘GDPR’ Regulation (EU) 2016/679). 

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.

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

Third party IT tools, including Social Media 

We may use third party IT tools to inform about and promote the ‘You are EU’ campaign through widely used communication channels, including the 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 policies of 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 tool does not in any way imply that the European 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.

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) on grounds relating to your particular situation. 

If you have provided your consent to the Directorate-General for Communication, Directorate B, Unit B.1 for the present processing operation, you can withdraw it at any time by notifying the Data Controller. The withdrawal 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. 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.

• The Data Controller

If you would like to exercise your rights under Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, or if you have comments, questions or concerns, or if you would like to submit a complaint regarding the collection and use of your personal data, please feel free to contact the Data Controller, Directorate-General for Communication, Unit B.1. (COMM-B1ec [dot] europa [dot] eu (COMM-B1[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)). 

• The Data Protection Officer (DPO) of the Commission

You may contact the Data Protection Officer (DATA-PROTECTION-OFFICERec [dot] europa [dot] eu (DATA-PROTECTION-OFFICER[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]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 (edpsedps [dot] europa [dot] eu (edps[at]edps[dot]europa[dot]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 Commission Data Protection Officer (DPO) publishes the register of all processing operations on personal data by the Commission, which have been documented and notified to him. You may access the register via the following link: http://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-00077.