Legal notice | Enterprise Europe Network

Data protection notice for the Enterprise Europe Network IT platform

One of your rights under EU law is that you must be informed when your personal data − also known as personal information − is processed (collected, used, stored) by any organisation including one of the EU institutions. You also have the right to know the details and purposes of that processing.

Your personal data is processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 2018/1725 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data.

The data controller of the processing operation is the Head of the Unit I-02 - SMP/SME Pillar, Internal Market and Support to Standardisation of the European Innovation Council and SME Executive Agency (EISMEA).

The legal basis of the processing operation are in particular:

Article 5(1)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, because 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; this is the obligation to implement parts of the Single Market Programme (SMP / SME Pilar 2021-2027) based on the Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/ 173 of 12 February 2021 establishing the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA).
Article 5(1)(b) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, because processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject.
Article 5(1)(d) of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725, because the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes.

The purpose of the data processing

The purposes of this data processing are to provide the interested public with:

information about the functioning of the Enterprise Europe Network
replies to requests for information submitted via web contact forms
the ability to create a user account to express an interest in a partnering profile and subscribe to the Network's partnering email alerts

Web contact forms: personal data included in contact forms is collected only to the extent necessary to reply. If the EISMEA support team in charge of the mailbox is unable to answer your question directly, it will forward your e-mail to another service in EISMEA or in the European Commission, or to an Enterprise Europe Network member organisation. You will be informed, via e-mail, about which service your question has been forwarded to. If you have any questions about the processing of your e-mail and related personal data, do not hesitate to include them in your message.

Email alerts: when you fill in the alert subscription form, the mandatory fields marked with an asterisk (*) are necessary for the verification of your data so we can create an account.

This site serves also as an access point to the Network where partners to the Enterprise Europe Network and interested third parties establish contacts. Via the home page of this site, registered users can access the Intranet and Partnering tools of the Enterprise Europe Network. Access to these tools is available only to registered users

Registered users may also be contacted proactively in relation to services provided to them by the Enterprise Europe Network.

Data collected and data recipients

Although you can browse through most of this website without giving any information about yourself, in some cases, personal data is required in order to provide the services you request.

In that case, the following of your personal data are collected :

-for requesters using the enquiry form: your first name, last name, e-mail address;

-for registered users in addition: your gender, phone number are mandatory for the purpose(s) outlined above; registered users have to signed up for EU login ([1]) credentials. The EU login service has its own privacy statement, in which you can find any information concerning the processing of your personal data in the context of EU login service ([2]).

In addition, for registered users the following non-mandatory personal data may be collected: photo, title, maiden name, mobile phone number, fax number, professional bio (about me), job title, area of responsibility, language skills, competencies and expertise, CV, your Linkedin/Twitter account. These personal data can only be processed based on your explicit prior consent.

The recipients of your data will be EISMEA and Commission staff members, the advisers of the Enterprise Europe Network who are respectively responsible for the management of the site and for the activities of the Network. Your data can be accessed by and based on your consent be transferred to organisations which are members of the Enterprise Europe Network, in all the countries in which it is present.

The following safeguards are in place for this transfer:

standard contractual clauses in contracts with Enterprise Europe Network member organisations
obligation for Network users to accept the application of the present data protection notice when processing personal data

Third parties, such as external service providers having signed a service contract with EISMEA or the Commission, may also have access to your data, where necessary for the purposes outlined above.

The information in question can be transferred to bodies charged of monitoring or inspection tasks in application of Union and national law (e.g. internal audits, European Anti-fraud Office (OLAF), European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), law enforcement bodies).

Your rights

You have the right to:

access your personal data and to request your personal data to be rectified, if the data is inaccurate or incomplete
where applicable, you have the right to request a restriction or to object to processing, to request a copy or erasure of your personal data held by the data controller

If processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of the processing based on your consent before its withdrawal.

Your request to exercise one of the above rights will be dealt with without undue delay and within one month.

Your right to information, access, rectification, erasure, restriction or objection to processing, communication of a personal data breach or confidentiality of electronic communications may be restricted only under certain specific conditions as set out in the applicable Restriction Decision in accordance with Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2018/1725.Your data will be removed immediately after your request to quit the reception of alerts and, for registered users of the Intranet, after the request to remove your user account, except for data necessary for audit purposes which are kept for ten years after the request for deletion of the account. The name of participants to events is kept for two years after the end of the event.

Questions about data protection

If you have any queries concerning the processing of your personal data via this site, you may address them to the Data controller Head of Unit I-02. SMP/COSME Pillar via this contact form.

You have right of recourse at any time to the EISMEA Data protection officer and the European Data Protection Supervisor.

Reuse is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged. The Commission's reuse policy is implemented by the Decision of 12 December 2011 - reuse of Commission documents .

Where prior permission must be obtained in particular for the reproduction or use of textual and multimedia information (sound, images, software, etc.) of the Network or third parties, such permission shall cancel the above-mentioned general permission and shall clearly indicate any restrictions on use.

Reuse is not applicable to documents or elements subject to intellectual property rights of third parties.

Disclaimer

The European Innovation Council and SME Executive Agency (EISMEA) maintains the Enterprise Europe Network central website to ensure access to information about the Network and its local contact points. Our goal is to keep this information timely and accurate. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them. However, EISMEA accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on this site.

This information is:

of a general nature only and is not intended to address the specific circumstances of any particular individual or entity
not necessarily comprehensive, complete, accurate or up to date
sometimes linked to external sites over which the Commission services have no control and for which the Commission assumes no responsibility
not professional or legal advice (if you need specific advice, you should always consult a suitably qualified professional)

It is our goal to minimise disruption caused by technical errors. However some data or information on our site may have been created or structured in files or formats that are not error-free, and we cannot guarantee that our service will not be interrupted or otherwise affected by such problems. EISMEA accepts no responsibility with regard to such problems incurred as a result of using this site or any linked external sites.

This disclaimer is not intended to limit the liability of EISMEA in contravention of any requirements laid down in applicable national law, or to exclude its liability for matters which may not be excluded under that law.

Additional information

Social media

The social media may be used to present the work being done by the stakeholders of the Platform or Commission services through widely used and contemporary channels.

For instance, when uploading content, the members/moderators disseminate it through the social media channels while other members can, for example, follow links to X and LinkedIn.

Cookies are not set by our display of social media buttons to connect to those services when our website pages are loaded on your computer (or other devices) or from components from those services embedded in our web pages.

Each social media channel is a separated controller and has their own policy on the way they process your personal data when you access their sites. For example, if you choose to watch a video on YouTube, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept YouTube cookies; if you look at the Twitter activity on Twitter, you will be asked for explicit consent to accept X cookies; the same applies for LinkedIn.

If you have any concerns or questions about their use of your personal data, you should read their privacy policies carefully before using them.

Cookies are used for the technical functioning of a website or for gathering statistics.

Cookies are also typically used to provide a more personalised experience for a user for example, when an online service remembers your user profile without you having to login.

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as login, language, and font size and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to the site or browse from one page to another.

When you visit the Platform, some data may be collected on your browsing experience such as your IP address, the page you visited, when you visited and the website page you were redirected from.

This information is used to gather aggregated and anonymous statistics with a view to improving our services and to enhance your user experience.

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being installed. Please note that in such a case some services and functionalities may not work as designed. The system uses session cookies in order to ensure communication between the browser and the server. Therefore, the browser should be configured to accept cookies and they are discarded once the browser session is terminated.

The collection, aggregation and anonymising operations are performed in the data centre of the European Commission under adequate security measures.

Version June 2025

[1] EU Login is the European Commission's Authentication Service: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/cas

[2] EU Login Privacy Statement: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/cas/privacyStatement.html