Protection of your personal data

European Commission — Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development
Directorate F. Outreach, Research and Geographical Indications — F.1. External communication and promotion policy

This privacy statement provides information about the processing and the protection of your personal data.

• Processing operation: Processing of personal data linked to meetings and events
• Data Controller: European Commission, Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development / Unit F.1, hereafter AGRI F.1
• Record reference: DPR-EC-01063

1. Introduction

The European 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 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.

This privacy statement explains the reason for the processing of your personal data in the context of the "The 2026 EU Agri Food Days", organised by AGRI F.1. It explains 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.

2. Why and how do we process your personal data?

Purpose of the processing operation: AGRI F.1 collects and further processes your personal data to provide you with information about the conference, (before, during and after) and to process your application for participation in that event.

The conference will be a physical conference, but live web-streaming will be available. The recording of the event will also remain available on our event webpage (EU Agri-Food Days - European Commission (europa.eu)) for 2 years.

Audio-visual recordings at the event of the speakers, organisers and participants, as well as photographs of the speakers and panoramic photographs of participants and organisers, will be taken and published in the context of the event on the conference website or the European Commission's website (EU Agri-Food Days - European Commission (europa.eu)) and social media accounts X: @EUAgri - Facebook: EUAgri - YouTube: EUAgri - Instagram: euagrifood.

The audience or non-speaker participants are not photographed / recorded individually or in groups unless they have specifically consented to being photographed / recorded. They may however appear on panoramic photographs or recordings of the whole event or audience.

High-level speakers, moderators and panelists will be recorded and photographed in the course of their participation to the event. Likewise, any member of the public interacting with the panels (e.g. asking questions) may be recorded and photographed individually. If they do not wish to be part of the recording/publishing activities, they have the possibility to object to processing. They must inform the conference organisers by email at AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu. If you do not wish to become part of the live web-streaming, you should not directly interact with the panels; you may also sit in the designated section of the auditorium.

AGRI F.1 will retain and process your contact data for the purpose of inviting you to the next edition of this event on the basis of public interest (Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725). You can object to this processing activity by sending an email to AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu.

Your personal data will not be used for any automated decision-making including profiling.

3. On what legal ground(s) do we process your personal data?

The processing operations on personal data of High-level speakers, and panelists, interacting public, linked to the organisation, management, follow-up and promotion of the meeting or event (including web-streaming, photos, audio-visual recording) are necessary for the management and functioning of the Commission, as mandated by the Treaties. Those provisions are in particular, Article 11 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 15 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The conference is organised in the framework of external communication activities carried out on the basis of Articles 6 and 45 of Regulation (EU) No 1306/2013.

Consequently, those processing operations are lawful under Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (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).

The processing operations on personal data of the people with whom a contract is concluded in connection to the organisation and management of the event (e.g. moderators), are carried out in line with the contractual provisions. Consequently, that processing is necessary and lawful under Article 5(1)(c) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (processing is necessary 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).

As a participant, your consent is required for the following actions during the meeting or event:

• processing of your data necessary to enable your participation to this event, as described in this privacy statement, (unless you fall under the categories indicated above);
• sharing of the event participants list containing your name and affiliation with other participants for networking purposes;
• generation of individual QR codes containing participants' contact details, to be printed on their event badges to facilitate networking and the exchange of contact information;
• processing of your personal data for inviting you to future events the data controller may organise (including future editions of this event);
• taking pictures or audio/visual recordings that depict you individually or in small groups.

Additionally, regardless of your role, your consent will be required for:

• processing of your personal data relating to your dietary requirements and/or special access requirements.

If you opt-in, you are giving us your explicit consent under Article 5(1)(d) and Article 10(2)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 to process your personal data for those specific purposes. You can give your consent via a clear affirmative act by ticking the box(es) on the online registration form.

Your consent for these services can be withdrawn at any time by contacting the controller of the event at AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu.

4. Which personal data do we collect and further process?

The following personal data will be processed:

• contact details (function/title, first name, last name, name of organisation, city, country, e-mail address, telephone number);
• nationality, passport or identity card number and its date of issue and expiry date may be collected, so that you may obtain access to the premises where the meeting/event is held;
• financial information (such as a payment card number or bank account) may be collected for the payment of fees of the meeting/event or for possible reimbursements, if you are eligible;
• audio/video recordings (including photographs) of speakers, moderators and consenting participants;
• dietary requests (if any) or specific access requirements.

The provision of personal data is not mandatory, but you may be unable to participate to the event or to benefit from specific services if you choose not to provide it.

5. How long do we keep your personal data?

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

For each of the categories of personal data that may be processed, please find below the retention details and the reference to the relevant record of processing:

• Personal data related to the organisation and management of the meeting or event (this includes the information given during the registration, before, during or after the event) will be kept for five years after the meeting or event.
• Sensitive personal data relating to dietary and/or access requirements will be deleted as soon as they are no longer necessary for the purpose for which they have been collected in the framework of the meeting or event, but no later than within 1 month after the end of the meeting or event.
• Recordings from the web-streamed meeting or event will be kept for 2 years before being deleted. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00306 (Web-streaming of Commission events).
• Audio/video recordings and photographs taken in the context of this event will be retained for a maximum of 5 years after the event, after which these files may be transmitted to the Commission's Historical Archives for long-term preservation. More information on the Historical Archives is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00837.
• Personal data shared with the Directorate-General for Human Resources and Security of the European Commission for the participants to gain access to Commission buildings is kept for 6 months after the termination of the link between the data subject and the Commission. More information is available in the Record of Processing DPR-EC-00655 (Commission Physical Access Control System (PACS)).

Selected service providers for organisational purposes (such as caterers, travel agents or event management organisations) are contractually bound to process personal data on behalf of and in line with the instructions of the data controller, keep confidential any data they process and protect it from unauthorised access, use and retention.

6. How do we protect and safeguard your personal data?

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 Commission Decision (EU, Euratom) 2017/46 of 10 January 2017 on the security of communication and information systems in the European Commission.

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.

The Commission's processors (contractors) are bound by a specific contractual clause for any processing operations of your personal data on behalf of the Commission. The processors have to put in place appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure the level of security, required by the Commission.

7. Who has access to your personal data and to whom is it disclosed?

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

Where necessary, we may also share your information with the following service provider for the purposes of organising the event:

• VO Communication Agency, Rue Haute 139/16, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

Other service providers will be engaged at a later stage, closer to the event. If you want more information on this topic, please feel free to contact us at AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu.

Cookies

Cookies are short text files stored on a user's device (such as a computer, tablet or phone) by a website. Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website (functional cookies) or for gathering statistics (analytical cookies).

If registration for the meeting/event takes place via a Commission website, the cookies employed by the Commission on the registrant's device for that purpose will be covered by the cookie policy of the Commission, which is available here: https://ec.europa.eu/info/cookies_en.

When you visit the website of the event and when you register, we will indicate in the specific privacy statement how long we will keep the browser history of your visit. This information will then be deleted. The collection, aggregation and anonymising operations are performed in the data centre of the European Commission under adequate security measures.

Cookies are stored by Europa Analytics, the corporate service which measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the European Commission's websites on EUROPA.

Enabling these cookies is not strictly necessary for the website to work but it will provide you with a better browsing experience. You can delete or block these cookies, but if you do that, some features of the meeting/event website may not work as intended.

The cookie-related information is not used to identify data subjects personally and the pattern data is fully under the Commission's control. These cookies are not used for any purpose other than those described here.

Should you wish to opt your personal data out of our anonymised, aggregated statistics, you can do so on our cookies page. In particular, you can control and/or delete those cookies as you wish.

Third party IT tools, including Social Media

We may use third party IT tools to host, inform about and promote the meeting/event through widely used communication channels, including the 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 read the relevant privacy policies of the different IT tools / social media platforms carefully before using them. 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.

In particular, in the course of our event, we may utilise the audience-engagement tool Slido. As a Cisco Systems Inc. subsidiary, Slido is covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, Commission Implementing Decision EU 2023/1795 (adequacy decision under the meaning of Article 47 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725). The use of other social media tools may likewise imply the transfer of personal data to the US under the same basis. You can choose freely whether you wish to utilise these tools.

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.

8. What are your rights and how can you exercise them?

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) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 on grounds relating to your particular situation.

Insofar as you have consented to provide your personal data to the data controller for the present processing operation, you can withdraw your consent at any time by notifying the data controller at AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu. The withdrawal of your consent 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.

9. Contact information

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, AGRI-F1@ec.europa.eu.

The Data Protection Officer (DPO) of the Commission

You may contact the Data Protection Officer (DATA-PROTECTION-OFFICER@ec.europa.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 (edps@edps.europa.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.

10. Where to find more detailed information?

The Commission Data Protection Officer (DPO) publishes the register of all processing operations on personal data by the European 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-01063.