The Secretariat of EARPA is run by CLERENS NV/SA (VAT n° BE0791 153 081) who is the data controller, responsible for processing your personal data in accordance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Please click here for more details regarding the Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

This is the privacy notice of the European Automotive Research Partners Association – EARPA. In this document, “we”, “our”, or “us” refer to EARPA. Our contact details can be found here.

EARPA acknowledges that the lawful and correct treatment of personal data and information is crucial and is fully committed to the principles of data protection, as set out in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Introduction

This privacy notice explains and will attempt to help you understand what information is collected, how we use this information and what to expect when EARPA collects and processes it.

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), EARPA is termed as a ‘data controller’ which means that we are responsible for how and why personal data is used and processed. In case you have any questions on our privacy policy, please get in contact with CLERENS NV/SA who can assist with any questions or queries regarding this privacy policy.

What information do we collect and receive about you?
We collect personal data and information about you when you register with us as a member and/or subscribe to our newsletter. We have an interest in ensuring that you receive only the communication that is relevant and applicable to yourself. The types of personal data we hold are listed below:

• Your full name (mandatory)
• Your title
• The name of the organization you work for or are associated with (mandatory)
• The address of the organisation you work for or are associated with
• Your organisation email address (mandatory)
• Your secretaries email address
• Your organisation telephone number
• A profile picture (EARPA members only for intranet account, not mandatory)

We will use the personal information above to send you our newsletter and grant you access to our intranet if you are an EAPRA member, or to invite you to our events and provide you with information on them if you are an external contact. You may opt out of this at any time by contacting us.

How we use the information about you

Information that you supply will be treated in confidence and in accordance with the principles of the GDPR.

We store this information in safe and secure tool that includes an internal and external members database hosted by a third-party provider. This information is kept as accurate as possible – all of our staff regularly take responsibility for keeping this database up to date. With the same tool, we create and deliver our newsletters and mailings to our members. With this we gather automated statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies including clear gifs to help us monitor and improve our newsletter.

We use X, to manage and handle our social media interactions. If you send us a private or direct message then we will store this for 3 months before deleting the correspondence. This will not be shared with anyone else.

In addition, we do also have hard copies of data, securely and safely stored in the office and this information is never shared.

We will amend your personal record as soon as you tell us that your details have changed (e.g. a change of job title or an organisation name). If you leave an organisation and would like us to delete your record, this will be done as soon as we are informed.

In summary, EARPA communicates with you through certain means and on the following basis:

• Newsletter mailouts, interest group mailings, invitations to and information on events and conferences. You can opt out of these at any time.
• Responding to queries, feedback or requests. If you contact us with a problem or question, we will use your information to respond.
• Informing you about operational changes or to provide you with formal documentation as part of your membership –for instance services and administrative emails, billing information and important service related notices, such as security and fraud notices. These emails and messages are considered an essential part of the services provided by EARPA and you may not opt-out of them unless someone else in your organisation is willing to be contacted instead.
• Intranet/Members Area: EARPA members are granted access to our Intranet/Members Area when registering with their company email address. You can always view and edit your contact details in the “Edit your profile” section of our intranet. On our intranet you will have access to privileged information. Please note, that we do have a members address book on our intranet, where your contact details may be found by other EARPA members.

We will not share any of the information you provide during the period of your membership with any third parties for marketing purposes or store any of your information outside of the European Economic Area. The information you provide will be held securely by us and/or our data processors whether the information is in electronic or physical format.

Basis for information processing – why we use the information about you

All of the information you provide will only be used for the purpose of progressing your application and for its intended purpose, or to fulfil legal or regulatory requirements if necessary. We ensure that we collect only the minimum personal data necessary and keep it for only as long as necessary, after which it is deleted from our database.

There are certain bases under which we process different categories of your personal information. The three categories explained below are applicable from an EARPA perspective:

Contract Obligations/Agreements

When an account is created via our website, or your organisation applies for membership via another means such as email or post, and an authorised representative has agreed to our terms and conditions, then a contract is formed between yourselves and EARPA. In order to carry out these obligations, the information that you provide us, personal or otherwise must be processed accordingly.

Consent

Certain actions by yourself require no contractual obligation, for example simply browsing our website or inquiring about events that we run. On the other hand, subscribing to our newsletter or registering for access to our intranet would involve entering into a contract as explained above. However, if, during the course of any of these actions you provide us with personal information, then you also now have to provide us with consent.

We aim to obtain your consent to process any personal information through an opt-in process. Essentially this means that whenever you will be asked for personal information by EARPA you will first be asked for your explicit consent by us – that you are content and in agreement that we will process your data and information in a legal and safe manner and for a specific purpose. This consent has to be stated clearly and explicitly and must be an active traceable action by the individual rather than passive acceptance through pre-ticked boxes or opt-outs.

The withdrawal of consent can also easily be exercised at which point we will discontinue processing your information.

You may withdraw your consent at any time by instructing us via info@earpa.eu.

Legal obligation

On occasions we must process your personal information in order to comply with a statutory obligation. For example, we may be required to provide information to legal authorities upon their request or if they have proper authorisation.

Other information we may retain

EARPA may also collect and receive:

• Billing and other information: members (companies) pay a membership fee to EARPA. In doing so, we may collect and store the billing address provided to us by yourself on behalf of your organisation. As our events are free of charge, we do never require personal bank details from you.
• Service usage information: from time to time, we conduct surveys and interviews with individuals and organisations from the sector. We will explain any specific privacy notices as part of the activity, should it differ from this privacy policy.
• Website traffic and newsletter readings: we also store some information to enable us to see how popular pages on our website are and news items in our newsletters. This typically involves assessing aggregate level information, such as IP addresses. Analysing this information allows us to tailor our services to meet your needs.

How do we protect the security of your information?

EARPA takes the security and privacy of your personal data seriously taking into account the potential sensitivity of this information. Various organisational and technical measures are taken to protect information you provide to us from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure.

We handle two different databases. One for external contacts and one for members with access to our intranet. Neither database is accessible by third parties and is only handled by our staff. Contact details from members with access to our intranet can be found on our intranet (in the members address book) by other EARPA members with access to our intranet. We do not provide the option to download contact details of any of our members, they can only be looked up.

To learn more about current practices and policies regarding security and confidentiality of Customer Data and other information, please contact the EARPA Secretariat.

When can we share and disclose your information 

EARPA may share information with others as follows:

• With third party service providers and agents: We may engage third party companies or individuals, such as third-party payment processors, mailing houses etc, to process information on our behalf.
• To comply with laws: To comply with legal or regulatory requirements and to respond to lawful requests, court orders and legal process.
• To enforce our rights, prevent fraud and for safety: To protect and defend the rights, property, or safety of us or third parties, including enforcing contracts or policies, or in connection with investigating and preventing fraud.

Requesting access about the data we have

You have the right to access the information we hold about you. This is called a subject access request. To make this request please contact the EARPA Secretariat under info@earpa.eu

Contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or practices directly at our mailing address here or at the address below:

Avenue Adolphe Lacomblé 59
1030 Schaerbeek
Brussels, Belgium

If you would prefer us to:

• Stop contacting you
• Amend your information
• Delete your information
• Any other changes

Please tell us. You can do so by emailing us.  We will make any changes requested as soon as possible.

You also have the right to ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in your information corrected.  Furthermore, if you feel that we have not satisfactorily handled and processed your data or information, please do contact us and we will do everything we can to rectify the problem.