Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)  

The GDPR is EU Regulation (EU) 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. It repeals Directive 95/46/EC. The GDPR comes in force on 25 May, 2018. More information can be found on the EC GDPR site. 

Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership as data owner and processor 

Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership gathers personal data (name, email address, phone number, affiliation) through subscriptions on our newsletter, registrations for the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership activities and events, and from our members. All data gathered and processed by the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership is subject to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to protect the privacy of all EU inhabitants. Note that the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership partly makes use of the IT system of the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) to support its website and IT services. For all information regarding the data processing from the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership website, we refer to the VLIZ privacy policy. To send newsletters Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership makes use of Mailchimp as the data processor (see point 5 below). To register participants for events in some cases the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership uses Eventbrite as the data processor.  

Your rights as a data subject 

A data subject is the natural person for whom personal data is processed. Each person has the right to be informed on what personal data is being processed and to have access to their personal data. 

As a data subject, you can request: 

• corrections or updates to your personal data 
• to restriction or stop the processing of your data; 
• to erase your data from our database 

 

Note that not all rights are absolute: the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership can have compelling legitimate grounds that outweigh the interests and rights of the objector (accountancy, juridical reasons...). When a request is made, the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership may demand extra information to confirm your identity. All requests made by data subjects will be logged. 

Legal grounds for data processing 

There are several legal grounds for data processing. The most common is prior consent, which can be withdrawn at any time, or it can stem from an agreement with our member institutes. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership further has the legal obligation to process personal data for accountancy purposes, and has to keep this data according to the legal obligations. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership also processes personal data for common interest as the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership maps and describes the European marine and maritime science and innovation landscape, and gathers professional data on scientists, industry representatives, policy makers and institutes for this purpose. 

Services requiring personal data 

For some of the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership services and activities processing of personal data is necessary. By entering your personal data, you agree to the data processing. This data is kept for as long as the agreement lasts, and at least as long as is required for legal purposes (e.g. accountancy). For purposes concerning proof in juridical disputes, Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership may store personal data up to 10 years after the occurrence, which is the maximum legal term for placing personal claims. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership requires personal data for the following: 

1. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership partners 

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership collects data of its partner organisations. This includes the contact details (name, e-mail, address, phone number) of the delegates and alternates and any other persons from the organisations that have been nominated to participate in the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership Working or Expert Groups, events and publications. The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership uses this data to inform partners on the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership activities and for partners administration (legal obligation and reporting to the member countries and European Commission). The institutional affiliation is saved for institutional partners. 

2. Participation in (on-line) surveys 

The personal data collected depends on the type of survey, and can contain: full name, e-mail address, country, organisation name and type, telephone number.  

3. Visitor tracking on websites and cookies 

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership makes use of the IT support and system of the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) to support its website and IT services. VLIZ keeps logs of website visits - which contain: an IP address, time information, and the url visited - for bug tracking and to monitor for malicious visits. Along with the web-server logging, an anonymous visitor-tracking system is in place, to track which pages on the websites hosted by VLIZ are accessed. We also use cookies to enhance the surfing experience (e.g. so visitors only have to log in or choose the language setting once). It is indicated on each by VLIZ supported website that cookies are used and you can find a link to the VLIZ privacy policy. 

4. Conference and other event participation 

In order to participate in events organised by the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, registration is required for organisational purposes (venue size, catering services, inform participants on programme updates, etc.). Registration forms will contain a section to allow participants to subscribe to further communications by the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, or to remove their data once the event has taken place (this is the default option). For each event, several e-mails may be sent as part of the communication agreement: save-the-date, posting of the tentative programme, abstract submission calls, closing of the early bird or final programme, and the closing e-mail with links to pictures taken and download links for presentations. 

During our events, pictures/film can be taken which can be communicated to the participant, used in Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership publications, or posted on our website and social media channels. If you do not want your pictures to be published, you can send a request for the removal of photographs or films to the e-mail address used for event administration or to info@bluepartnership.eu. Photos in which the requester are shown will be removed from our websites, social media channels and servers; for films, the film segment will be cut out or the film deleted out if the requester is clearly visible. 

5. Mailing lists organised or serviced by the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership 

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership manages mailing lists which were created to send out Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership newsletters, to facilitate events, to allow for working-group communication, for partners in a project, etc. Each e-mail sent to these mailing lists contains an unsubscribe link and a contact address. For several communications, the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership can make use of the services of Mailchimp for this purpose. Mailchimp functions in this instance as the data processor and for this reason the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership has a data processing agreement with Mailchimp. You can find the Mailchimp privacy policy here (link: https://mailchimp.com/legal/).

6. Drupal, our content management system (CMS) 

The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership website is created in Drupal. For content management several editors are appointed, and these need an account to be able to log in to and change a site. All session information and changes made by the editors are stored in Drupal. Each editor can list their actions for each of the sites via a Drupal module. 

Questions and Complaints 

If you have any questions regarding personal data stored by Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership, you can contact the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership – Communications, by sending us by e-mail at info@blueeconomy.eu by phone: +32 (0)2 626 16 60 or on the following address: Rue du Trône 4, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. 

Complaints concerning the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership privacy policy, or concerning unlawful data processing can be addressed to the Belgian Privacy Commission, the National Data Protection Authority (DPA) for Belgium. If there is a data breach, the Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership is bound to inform the Privacy Commission within 72 hours, and affected users - if identifiable - will also be notified.