Legal Notice

This Privacy policy applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of WMCES including via its website.

WMCES is the data controller responsible for the processing of your personal data. WMCES is a European political foundation (0892.052.283), whose registered office is established at Rue du Commerce 10, 1000 (Belgium). This means that WMCES determines for what purposes and with what means your personal data will be processed.

We collect your personal data in two ways, either directly from you or via third parties:

Information provided by you

We collect your information and personal data that we get directly from you:

• when you visit our offices: data such as your name and company name.
• when you subscribe to receive newsletters, event invitations, papers and podcasts or alerts for common projects with our partners: data such as your name, e-mail address, name of your organisation, position, whether you are a member of the press or not, topics of interests and preferred format (HTML/Plaintext).     
• when you register for an event: data such as your name, e-mail address, name of your organisation, position and whether you would like to receive invitations for future events.   
• when you become a member of WMCES: data such as your name, e-mail address, name of your organisation, position, country, date of election/nomination and duration of mandate, phone number and postal address.
• when you contact us directly by e-mail, phone or otherwise: data such as your name, e-mail address, name of your organisation, phone number, the content of your correspondence with WMCES and any other personal data you provide that may be relevant to answering your question.
• when you give us your business card: data such as your name, e-mail address, name of your organisation and phone number.  
• when you apply for a job with WMCES: data such as your name, your contact information, your resume, your grades, your correspondence with WMCES and other documents you provide us with.
• when your professional activity is linked to the activities of WMCES: data you provide when you interact with the WMCES

Information from other sources

We also collect information from other sources:

• when you visit our building: data such as camera images processed by surveillance cameras at the entrance of our building.
• when you browse our website: data we receive from cookie providers about your activity on our website.
• when you interact with us on social media platforms: data we receive from social media platforms.
• when your professional activity is linked to the activities of WMCES: data we collect from a variety of sources, e.g. a newspaper article containing a quote contributed to you, your name as an author on a position paper, …

Information we collect automatically

When you browse our website, we receive data from cookie providers about your activity on our website. This information does not allow us to identify you directly. Therefore, we cannot know who you are merely based on the automatically obtained information. We can combine the automatically obtained information with the information provided by you.

More information on the use of cookies by WMCES can be found in our cookie policy below.

We process your personal data only for specific, explicit, and legitimate purposes. For each purpose, we ensure there is a valid legal basis under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The table below outlines our processing activities:

WMCES shares your data only when necessary, with the following third parties:

• Service providers who perform services on our behalf, such as marketing agencies, web hosting companies, mailing vendors (e.g. Mailchimp, Salesforce or Typeform);
• Event-related service providers, such as event agencies, registration platforms and hotels, for the organisation of our activities;
• European institutions, such as the Authority for European political parties and European political foundations, the European Parliament, OLAF, the Court of Auditors and Member States, but only for auditing and control purposes as required by law (e.g. Regulation 2025/2445);
• Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V. (KAS), to whom we transfer certain data for the purpose of creating and maintaining a historical archive in the public interest of the WMCES’s activities. This sharing is governed by a controller-to-controller data sharing agreement between WMCES and KAS, who both act as independent data controllers for this purpose.

In addition, WMCES may be obliged to disclose your personal data if this is required by law or a court order.

In all cases, we are committed to ensuring the confidentiality of your data, which includes among other things that we conclude adequate contracts with our partners and service providers which impose confidentiality obligations on them.

Some data may be stored or transferred outside the European Economic Area (EEA) for the purposes described in point 4 above. It is possible that this transfer occurs via third parties (as mentioned in point 5 above) established outside the EEA territory or because data are stored on a server located outside or accessible outside the EEA.

WMCES is committed to ensuring an adequate level of protection for your data when it is transferred outside the EEA. We will only transfer your personal data outside the EEA if one of the following conditions applies:

• A specific derogation under Chapter V of the GDPR applies.
• The European Commission has issued an adequacy decision for the country to which the data is transferred.
• We have implemented appropriate safeguards, such as concluding Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) approved by the European Commission. Where we use SCCs, we will assess the law and practice of the third country and implement supplementary measures where necessary to ensure your data is afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EEA.

In order to guarantee the security of your personal data we have set in place a series of security measures and safeguards. Your personal data is stored on secure networks that may only be accessed by a limited number of persons holding special access rights and who undertake to respect and maintain its confidential nature.

Despite these measures, due care should be taken when storing and/or sharing your personal data, particularly when connecting via unsecure or public networks.

WMCES furthermore has committed to ensure that the service providers that process personal data on behalf of us also implement sufficient technical and organisational measures.

The collected data are kept no longer than necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed, as described in point 4 above.

Our retention periods are determined by the purpose of the processing and any applicable legal or contractual obligations. For example:

• Data processed for newsletters and communications is retained until you withdraw your consent (unsubscribe).
• Personal data related to your membership or event participation is kept for the duration of the relationship and for a subsequent period as required by our legal (e.g., financial) and contractual obligations.
• Personal data from job applicants is retained for a short period after the recruitment process is completed, unless you consent to us keeping it for future opportunities.
• Personal data may be stored for a longer period in the event of claims or disputes.
• Personal data selected for archiving purposes in the public interest, as described in point 4, will be transferred to the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, who may retain this personal data indefinitely for historical and research purposes, in accordance with applicable data protection laws and safeguards.

The website of WMCES contains references (e.g. via hyperlinks) to other websites, which are offered by other organisations (e.g. organisations in our network) or by social media (e.g. Facebook, X, Instagram, Youtube, LinkedIn, Soundcloud, etc.). WMCES is not responsible for the processing of personal data via these websites. Nor does this Privacy policy apply to these websites. WMCES advises you to check the privacy policies of these social media.

If you share content from our website via social media, your personal data will be visible for the visitors of these social media. WMCES is not responsible for the processing of personal data via these social media. Nor does this Privacy policy apply to these social media.

You have a number of rights with regard to your personal data. Some of these rights may be subject to conditions or exceptions.

You have a right of access to your data, a right to correct your data, a right to the erasure of your data, a right to limit the processing of your data and a right to ask the portability of your data.

You also have a right to object to the processing of your data.  Specifically, you have the right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and an absolute right to object to processing for direct marketing purposes.

If the processing of your data is based on consent, you also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without this affecting the legitimacy of the processing done prior to the withdrawal of your consent.

You can send your request by e-mail to tla@martenscentre.eu or by mail to the address mentioned below. To protect your privacy and security, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before processing your request.

In every e-mail that we send, there is an option to update your information or unsubscribe.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority of your habitual residence, your place of work or the place of an alleged infringement of the GDPR. The Belgian Data Protection Authority is the supervisory authority for Belgium and can be contacted at contact@apd-gba.be.

If you have further questions or complaints about this website or about this Privacy policy, you can also contact us:

• by e-mail at tla@martenscentre.eu
• by mail at Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, Rue du Commerce 10, 1000 Brussels (Belgium);
• by phone at the number: 0032 (0) 2 300 80 04