Privacy policy

 

This page tells you about what CIRCUSOL does with personal data, how CIRCUSOL protects personal data and how you can exercise the rights you have under privacy legislation.

CIRCUSOL is a project funded by the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission and coordinated by VITO. It has no legal entity on itself. The participating members are all joint data controller. On behalf of CIRCUSOL, VITO is responsible for the correct handling of your personal data.

CIRCUSOL shall handle the personal data in accordance with the Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (‘GDPR’).

Important remark: This privacy statement purely describes how your personal data is treated within the CIRCUSOL context. However, your personal data is shared with all CIRCUSOL participating members. For details on how these participating members treat your privacy (e.g. on how long data is kept, and how it is protected) , we refer to the Privacy Statements of the members:

WHAT ARE PERSONAL DATA?

Personal data means any information that is traceable to you as a person. Your name, address or email address are examples of personal data. On the website of the Belgian Data Protection Authority (https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be/) you will find more information about personal data and privacy legislation.

WHY DOES CIRCUSOL USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

CIRCUSOL uses your personal data to reply to your contact messages, send online newsletters, invite you to events, and contact you for possible collaborations (e.g. those suggested by you in the sign up form). If further personal data is required in such collaborations, the collection and use of your personal data will follow specific informed consent procedures which will be communicated with you in such collaborations.

CIRCUSOL shall process your personal data only with your informed consent, and shall not further exchange and/or process your personal data in a manner which is incompatible with the provisions laid down in the informed consent. CIRCUSOL ensures that the procedures are in accordance with EU and national regulations.

WHICH PERSONAL DATA DO WE USE?

CIRCUSOL uses following personal data:

  • Contact information: your name, e-mail-address, phone number
  • Other personal information: your company name/organization name, job title, your interests, how you want to interact with us, and any other personal information you voluntarily share with us
  • Cookies: personal information collected via cookies (check our cookie policy)
  • Other personal data defined in specific collaborations.

HOW LONG DOES CIRCUSOL KEEP YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

CIRCUSOL will keep your data until 6 months after the project ends, unless a follow-up project is defined, in which case you will be informed.

If you have signed up to receive information from CIRCUSOL and you later sign off, CIRCUSOL deletes your personal data.

When CIRCUSOL completes a study that involves use of your data because you were a participant, your data are deleted once they are no longer needed for archiving purposes. By this we mean that for an extended period it needs to be possible to substantiate the results of the study by referring to the underlying data. In this situation, CIRCUSOL will protect the personal data by giving them a pseudonym or rendering them anonymous, if possible. Data that have been given a pseudonym can no longer be traced directly to you as a participant. Data that have been rendered anonymous can never be traced to you.

HOW DOES CIRCUSOL SECURE YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

CIRCUSOL attaches great importance to ensuring that personal data provided by you are handled and kept secure with great care. In order to optimally protect your personal data against loss, theft, unauthorised access or misuse, CIRCUSOL takes the appropriate technical and organisational measures to keep your personal data secure. In terms of organisation, CIRCUSOL has arranged for research data to be accessible exclusively by employees involved in the research in question.

DOES CIRCUSOL GIVE PERSONAL DATA TO OTHER ORGANISATIONS?

CIRCUSOL adheres to the principle that it does not share your personal data with others than the initiating parties. The data will not be sold. However, there are exceptions whereby CIRCUSOL is required to give personal data to others. These are always exceptional circumstances, such as legal proceedings or crime prevention.

WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

Under the prevailing privacy legislation you have various rights you can exercise to keep control of the personal data an organisation collects about you and uses.

You can ask us (free of charge):

  • Which data we have about you;
  • What the aim is of specific processing;
  • Who processes your personal data.

You have the right (free of charge):

  • To make rectifications;
  • To have a copy of your personal data that we process for a particular purpose;
  • To submit a request that your data be deleted;
  • To ask us to no longer process your personal data.

If you wish to exercise your privacy rights, you can send an email to hello@circusol.eu.

To ensure that your request is processed, you must include the following information in your email or letter:

  • your name and address;
  • the date and your signature;
  • a description of your request in which you state your relationship to CIRCUSOL.
  • a copy of your ID (Make sure you make a safe copy of your ID, f.e. by masking any unnecessary data)

You may also contact the individual CIRCUSOL participating members for exercising your privacy rights concerning your personal data processed by these members.

Your request will always be processed but this does not necessarily mean that your request can be granted. This is because the prevailing privacy legislation recognises exceptional situations in which your privacy rights are not valid. This may be the case, for example, where personal data are used to conduct research.

You will receive a reply to your request within a month. If your request cannot be processed within a month, you will be notified accordingly. CIRCUSOL is required to process your request within three months at the latest.

INCIDENTS (DATA BREACH)

In spite of our precautionary measures designed to give personal data the best possible protection, it remains possible that an incident may occur in which personal data are involved. An incident of this type is called a data breach. If you believe that a data breach is occurring at CIRCUSOL, always get in touch with us. The best way to do this is by email via hello@circusol.eu.

The following information should be supplied when reporting a data breach:

  • your name and contact details;
  • the nature of the incident;
  • which personal data are involved;
  • which systems are involved in the incident; and
  • when and how you discovered the incident.

QUESTIONS AND COMPLAINTS

If you have any questions about this privacy statement, exercising your rights or CIRCUSOL's activities in the field of personal data, you can get in touch online with CIRCUSOL via hello@circusol.eu.

If you have a complaint about how CIRCUSOL handles personal data, we would like to hear from you. You can also report your complaint to the VITO Data Protection Officer, please indicate this explicitly in your request.

In addition, you are always entitled to submit a complaint to the Belgian Data Protection Authority (https://www.gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit.be/)

CHANGES

This privacy statement may be changed at any time by CIRCUSOL without prior announcement. Changes come into effect as soon as they are published on this website.