Privacy policy

Processing operation: WeBalkans.eu website

Data Controller: Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) Unit NEAR.A1 Inter-institutional Relations and Communication

Record reference: DPR-EC-05666

• 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 data and 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?

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 “We Balkans website” undertaken by the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Strategic Coordination Communication and Inter-institutional Relations is presented below.

Purpose of the processing operation: The Directorate-General for Neighbourhood & Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Strategic Coordination, Communication and Inter-institutional Relations collects and uses your personal information for the purposes of the visibility and promotion of EU-funded projects and programmes and EU related opportunities in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia) – through calls for applications and publishing of its results on the website (i.e. Young European Ambassadors contests), including information about vloggers participating in Made of Us campaign, invitations to events, and sending of notifications and news alerts about the EU-funded programmes and projects and EU-related opportunities in the Western Balkans region.

All data processing is transparent and abides by the principle of users opting-in/out, allowing the data they provide to be used for specific purposes: Your personal data will not be used for automated decision-making, including profiling.

We process your personal data because:

(a) The 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 (Article 5(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725).

The basis for the processing is laid down by the following Union law:

Article 11 of the consolidated European Treaty on the European Union states: “The institutions shall, by appropriate means, give citizens and representative associations the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action. The institutions shall maintain an open, transparent and regular dialogue with representative associations and civil society”.

Article 21(1) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU): overall mandate and guiding principles in the field of EU development cooperation; Articles 4(4) and 208 to 211 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

Informing the broad public is a task resulting from the European Commission's own prerogatives at institutional level, as provided for in Article 58(2) (d) of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 2018/1046 of 18 July 2018 on the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European Communities (OJ L 193, 30.7.2018, p. 1)We ensure that adequate and specific safeguards are implemented for the processing of personal data, in line with the applicable data protection legislation.

In addition, the processing is necessary for the fulfilment of the European Commission's obligation to ensure visibility of the Union’s financial support, as stipulated in Article 4(5) of Regulation (EU) No 236/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2014 laying down common rules and procedures for the implementation of the Union’s instruments for financing external action, OJ L 77, 15.3.2014.

The Young European Ambassador network was one component of the EU Regional Communication Programme for the Western Balkans (period 2021-2023) for which the legal basis was Regulation (EU) 236/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2014 laying down common rules and procedures for the implementation of the Union's instruments for financing external action and Regulation (EU) No 231/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2014 establishing an Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II). It is currently part of the Regional Strategic Communication Programme for the Western Balkans (period 2024-2027) for which the legal basis is Regulation (EU) 2021/1559 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 September 2021 establishing the Instrument for Pre-Accession assistance (IPA III).

(b) For the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract.

(c) For specific processing activities, the consent of the data subject is necessary. In compliance with Article 3(15) and Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, the consent must be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous.

In the very limited and specific cases within the framework of Young European Ambassadors contests, we might process special categories of personal data indicated in point 4 of this Privacy Statement, namely data related to the health or minority group status of the data subjects. The data subjects have given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for these specific purposes. If so, the processing will be limited to considering such data in the evaluation of the applications which may result in the selection of applicants with disabilities or of applicants belonging to minority groups in case of several applicants with similar scores insofar these (former) applicants satisfy the general application criteria.

Where data are not marked as mandatory, DG NEAR processes your personal data based on your consent (Article 5 (d) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725). All data processing is transparent and abiding by the principle of users’ opting-in/out and allowing the data they provide to be used for specific purposes.

We have obtained your consent directly from you. You may have expressed it by an email, submitted via e-registration form, or in any other written form.

We do not process special categories of personal data (Article 10 of the Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.

In order to carry out this processing operation the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Strategic Coordination, Communication and Inter-institutional Relations collects the following categories of personal data:

Young European Ambassadors:

• First name
• Last name
• Gender*
• Age
• E-mail address
• Telephone number
• CVs
• Country of citizenship
• Country of residence
• Language(s)
• Passport number
• Short presentation about them
• Photos, video, sound recording and written content
• Financial data , incl bank account
• Social media handles*
• Interests*
• Video upload*
• Disabilities*

Minority status** not mandatory fields

Vloggers:

• First name
• Last name
• Gender
• Age
• E-mail address
• Country of originLanguage(s)
• Driver’s licence*
• Passport number
• Instagram profile
• Other social media handles*
• Short presentation about them
• Photos, video, sound recording and written content
• Financial data , incl bank account

* not mandatory fields

Email news alerts (monthly, weekly, daily subscribers) and event invitees

• First name
• Last name
• E-mail address
• Country
• (Depending on the event, this could also include position/organisation)
• Themes and geographical area of interest (for news alerts)

Your data might be collected by means of the email alerts for registration interface in which the data subjects enter their data directly.

Website visitors: IP address

Data subjects unambiguously give their consent to the processing of the personal data when filling the online subscription form.

The Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Strategic Communication, Coordination and Inter-institutional Relations only keeps the personal data for the time necessary to fulfil the purpose of collection or further processing:
IP address:

• for the duration of the browsing session (The IP addresses are saved by the contractor (processor) for one year in the log files).

Young European Ambassadors (applicants and members):

• as long as the data subject is registered as applicant or existing Young European Ambassador and for as long as the website and social media channels operate as a tool of DG NEAR's promotion policy.
• as long as the data subject consents to processing(i.e. until a an applicant or Young European Ambassador requests removal of his/her application or membership to the Young European Ambassadors Network.

Vloggers participating in the Made of Us campaign, in the corresponding sub-page of the WeBalkans website and WeBalkans social media accounts:

• as long as the WeBalkans website and social media accounts are active

as long as the data subject consents to processing. Email Alerts monthly, weekly, daily subscribers and public event invitees:

• As long as the subscriber consents to processing (i.e. until a subscriber erases his/her account or unsubscribes from the mailing list).

The Commission is under obligation to keep the files including personal data relating to the activities implemented by the contractor for a period of 10 years following the signature of the contract.

The Commission’s contractor is under contractual obligation to keep records for a seven-year period after the final payment made under the contract. These documents comprise any documentation concerning expenditures and any inventory, necessary for the checking of supporting documents, including but not limited to timesheets, plane and transport tickets.

Data will be automatically removed at the end of the respective period or when no longer needed. Information will be anonymised within six months from the date of submission of the Unregistration Request.

DG NEAR's processors use the server e-mailing platform for sending the alerts to the data subjects. The server mailing platform meets the GDPR requirements and has a retention policy of 30 days on data stored on its servers.
Some parts of the data might be kept for a longer period where stipulated by financial authorities (10 years in case of financial transactions) or for auditing purposes (usually 7 years).

Depending on the technical solutions available, you can either write to the dedicated functional mailbox and ask to be unsubscribed from the mailing list or follow the unsubscribe link in the information email you have received. Appropriate action shall be taken within a week of receiving the request.

In case where data is kept for statistical purposes, some subscriber's optional data may be kept for 5 years after the un-subscription, providing these do not allow to identify the subscriber anymore and that these are available to a very restricted number of authorised persons performing the processing operation on a need-to-know basis, for the sole purposes of generating anonymised statistics.

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 in place. 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.

Personal data in electronic form: access to your personal data, as well as any other information collected in the website is exclusively provided through an identification system with password, accessible to a restricted number of users, without prejudice of a possible future transmission of these data to the bodies charged with the control and inspection of the Commission's activities in conformity with EU law. These users are the Units of DG NEAR, as well as officially contracted external companies.

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.

Staff of OLAF, IDOC, IAS (Internal Audit Services), the Legal Service of the Commission as well as staff of other DGs (SG, DG BUDG and clearinghouse) upon request necessary in the context of official investigations or for audit purposes.

Pursuant to Article 3(13) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, public authorities (e.g. Court of Auditors, EU Court of Justice) which may receive personal data in the framework of a particular inquiry in accordance with Union or Member State law shall not be regarded as recipients. The further processing of those data by those public authorities shall be in compliance with the applicable data protection rules according to the purposes of the processing.

Furthermore, access to your personal data is provided to external contractors working on behalf of and under contractual agreement with DG NEAR and engaged in creation, maintenance, management, and archiving of websites according to the “need to know” principle.

The information we collect will not be given to any third party, except to the extent and for the purpose we may be required to do so by law.

Cookies and third party IT tools:

Cookies are pieces of text generated by the web services that a user has visited; these text files can be set on the users’ devices by the website they are currently visiting (“first party persistent cookies”) or by a different website to the one they are currently visiting (“third party cookies”).

To facilitate the functioning of our website we may – subject to visitors’ consent – place small data files called cookies on your device. They enable the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, and font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you do not have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

Five different types of cookies will be in use:

• First party persistent cookies
• Technical session cookies
• Third party analytics cookies (including the Google Analytics cookies)
• Third party cookies from the Share widget
• Third party advertising cookies (Facebook Pixel)

On this promotional website, the following types of cookies are used: ‘first-party persistent cookies', and ‘session cookies’.

'First party persistent cookies' enable the tracking of the following information about the visitors to our website:

• IP address (anonymised)
• Location: country, region, city, approximate latitude and longitude (Geolocation)
• Date and time of the request (visit to the site)
• Title of the page being viewed (Page Title)
• URL of the page being viewed (Page URL)
• URL of the page that was viewed prior to the current page (Referrer URL)
• Screen resolution of user's device
• Time in local visitor's time-zone
• Files that were clicked and downloaded (Download)
• Links to an outside domain that were clicked (Outlink)
• Pages generation time (the time it takes for webpages to be generated by the webserver and then downloaded by the visitor: Page speed)
• Main language of the browser being used (Accept-Language header)
• Browser version, browser plugins (PDF, Flash, Java, …) operating system version, device identifier (User-Agent header)
• Language of the visited page
• Campaigns
• Site Search
• Events

The collected data will not be shared with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes. Moreover, the above-mentioned data cannot be used to identify a particular visitor.

'First party persistent cookies' are created by this website and enable:

• proper functioning of the website;
• the collection of statistics to improve website functionalities – for this purpose, the website uses Google Analytics (more information is provided below);
• social media sharing functions.
• monitoring conversions that can be attributed to ads on Facebook and its network. For this purpose, the website uses the Facebook Pixel.

'First party persistent' cookies expire after thirteen months (13), after which they are automatically removed from the users’ device.

'Technical Session' cookies do not contain any data - they are placed for the duration of a user session (time spent browsing the website). These cookies are necessary to keep the visitor’s choice selection when the website is accessed. Once the visitor leaves the website, the session cookie is deleted.

'Third party cookies' (including the Google Analytics cookies) are detailed below.

'Third party cookies' from the Share widget are placed on the computer - if the user opted-in - in order to allow users to share content on social media.

The website does not set cookies with the display of links to our social media when you are browsing our website

OPTING-IN
When the website is accessed first, the website visitor is provided with a choice to accept (“OK, I agree”) or refuse (“Decline cookies”) the placement of cookies. Accept cookies: By clicking this option, the visitor gives consent to the placement of all the cookies for the:

• Optimal functioning of the website
• Social media sharing function
• Collection of statistics

Decline cookies: By clicking this option, the visitor does not give consent to the placement of any of the abovementioned cookies. In this case, only a session cookie is placed; this is a technical cookie, the main purpose of which is to remember the visitors’ selection choice. This cookie is placed for the duration of a user session (time spent browsing the website) and will automatically be deleted when said session expires. Choosing not to accept cookies does not hinder your navigation experience on the website.
No selection made: If a visitor neither accepts nor refuses cookies, the website treats this as a refusal to the placement of cookies and all related functions are on hold until a selection is made. No cookies shall be placed on visitors’ devices, unless consent has been given by clicking on the “OK, I agree” option.

OPTING-OUT In case a visitor has opted-in to the placement of cookies, it is always possible to change this decision and opt-out. In order to opt-out, visitors need to delete all the cookies from their browser. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

To learn about how to clear cookies in different browsers, visit: https://www.aboutcookies.org/

DO NOT TRACK OPTION
Do Not Track is a technology that enables visitors to opt out from being tracked by websites for whatever purpose, including the use of analytics services, advertising networks and social platforms. You can enable the 'Do not track' option directly in your web browser. Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel will not track users who have enabled this option in their web browsers.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS
The website uses Google Analytics in order to track the information of visitors described above. For this purpose, the abovementioned collected data are transmitted to Google Inc. The IP addresses of visitors are anonymised by the website prior to their transmission to Google Inc. This protects the anonymity of the visitors that have opted for the full website functionalities.


More information Google Privacy Policy,
Google Terms of Service Google Analytics Terms of
www.google.com/analytics/policies

Google Analytics has implemented a data retention control feature. This feature provides website owners with the flexibility to define a retention period for the data stored within the Google Analytics account. The defined retention period is 26 months; any data beyond this period is deleted from Google servers.

FACEBOOK PIXEL
The website uses the Facebook Pixel in order to monitor the conversions that can be attributed to our advertising activity on Facebook and his network. The tool ensures data protection compliance by integrating with the corporate Cookie Consent Banner (CCK), respecting the “Do Not Track” (DNT) browser setting and applying anonymisation of visitors IP address.


All information on Facebook’s data policy can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy

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 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.

You have consented to provide your personal data to the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood & Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Inter-institutional Relations and Communication for the present processing operation. You can withdraw your consent 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.

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 Neighbourhood & Enlargement Negotiations / Unit NEAR.A1 Inter-institutional Relations and Communication, using the functional mailbox [email protected].

Data Protection Officer (DPO) of the Commission
You have the right to have recourse (i.e. you can lodge a complaint) to the European Data Protection Supervisor ([email protected]) 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-05666.