Data Protection Notice for BlueInvest

1. Introduction

Your personal data is processed in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 2018/1725[1] 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.

This privacy statement covers the services provided for the Assistance Mechanism for Investment in the Blue Economy, hereafter called “BlueInvest”.

BlueInvest is an assistance mechanism that will support access to finance for SMEs, start-ups, early stage businesses and scale-ups in blue economy. Its services include:

1. Set-up and operation of the BlueInvest Community, an online platform that will facilitate cooperation and exchange among SMEs, investors and other relevant players
2. Organisation of physical and virtual community events, such as the annual BlueInvest Days and BlueInvest targeted workshops
3. Set-up and operation of the BlueInvest Readiness Assistance service for blue economy businesses
4. Support for the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) calls for proposals
5. Support for the Blue Economy Investment Platform
6. Maintenance and development of a blue economy project pipeline of bankable/investable and innovative business ventures in different sectors of the maritime economy

Key users of the BlueInvest services mentioned above are:

• European start-ups, SMEs and scale-ups
• Private and public investors;
• Large enterprises;
• Business support stakeholders, such as incubators, accelerators, research and innovation institutes, clusters, private and corporate foundations
• Business coaches and investment experts;
• Programme operators

Some BlueInvest services pages may contain links to other third party websites whose privacy practices may be different from this site.

Neither BlueInvest, CINEA, the European Commission or the European Union is necessarily responsible for the privacy practices or policies within any of these other sites.

You should be aware of this when you leave the current website and we encourage you to read the privacy statements of other web sites you visit, as we have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by these third parties.

2. Why do we collect and process your data?

The legal basis of the processing are:

1. Council Regulation 58/2003 of 19 December 2002, laying down the Statute for executive agencies to be entrusted with certain tasks in the management of EU programmes;
2. Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/173 of 12 February 2021 establishing the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency, .... /… and repealing Implementing Decisions 2013/801/EU;
3. Commission Decision C(2021)947 of 12 February 2021 delegating powers to the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency;
4. Regulation (EU) No 508/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 May 2014 on the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and repealing Council Regulations (EC) No 2328/2003,  (EC) No 861/2006, (EC) No 1198/2006 and (EC) No 791/2007 and Regulation (EU) No 1255/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 149/1 of 20.5.2014) (EMFF programme).

We collect and process your personal data to provide the BlueInvest services mentioned above, with the following purposes:

1. To promote BlueInvest to relevant target audiences, primarily businesses, investors and business support stakeholders in the blue economy;
2. To enable online interaction, networking and business matchmaking between the key users, who will be invited to create a profile on the platform for information sharing and exchange;
3. To identify and select start-ups and SMEs that could receive assistance on investment readiness;
4. To identify and select business coaches that could provide coaching support to BlueInvest assistance beneficiaries;
5. To enable the management of the BlueInvest assistance beneficiaries’ coaching scheme;
6. To enable registration for and participation in BlueInvest events and workshops;
7. To support capacity development and learning for SMEs on-line and through training events.
8. To use web based tools to support the day-to-day management of the above services by European Commission, CINEA and contracted third parties acting on their behalf including but not limited to collecting data for reporting and business intelligence, process automation, management dashboards, etc.

The services mentioned above are delivered through several IT tools. They use personal data only if necessary for the successful delivery of the above-mentioned services. Specifically:

1. The selection of the BlueInvest Business Support beneficiaries is as follows:

1. Candidates answer a Call for expressions of interest. Applications are collected and processed through an online tool.
2. The applications are assessed and a final list is drawn up by the European Commission (DG MARE) and CINEA.
3. Coaching packages are designed for each beneficiary, according to their needs and business objectives.
4. Beneficiaries are assigned to business coaches based on their coaching packages.

2. The selection of BlueInvest Business Support coaches is as follows:

1. Candidates answer a Call for expressions of interest. All applications are facilitated through an online tool.
2. The applications are assessed and a final list is drawn up by CINEA.
3. Business coaches are assigned to beneficiaries based on the latter’s coaching packages.
4. Business coaches are matched to beneficiaries on the basis of having the required skills, experience and knowledge necessary and in accordance with the principles of non-discrimination, equal treatment and absence of conflicts of interest.

3. The selection of jury members for BlueInvest is as follows:

1. Candidates answer a Call for expressions of interest.
2. The applications are assessed and a final list is drawn up by CINEA.
3. Jury panel members are assigned to applications on the basis of having the required skills, experience and knowledge necessary and in accordance with the principles of non-discrimination, equal treatment and absence of conflicts of interest.

4. Key users of the programme have the possibility:

1. To join the BlueInvest online community, where they can participate in online discussions, collaborate with and learn from other members of the community;
2. To register for BlueInvest events and workshops, both physical and virtual;
3. To subscribe to learning sessions;
4. To subscribe to the online matching platform to find potential investors or collaborate with other enterprises and relevant organisations.

3. Who is responsible for the processing of your data?  

The data controller of the processing operation is Head of Unit of Unit D.3 “Sustainable Blue Economy” of the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA), CINEA-EMFAF-CALLS@ec.europa.eu

The following entity/ies process your personal data on our behalf:

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers EU Services EESV (PwC EU Services EESV)
• CARSA

4. From whom and what personal data do we collect?

Personal data of the following data subjects is collected:

• Visitors to the BlueInvest website;
• Users of BlueInvest services, including BlueInvest community members
• Users of BlueInvest applications
• Participants to BlueInvest events
• Programme operators (expert evaluators, jury panel members and coaches)

Collected personal data

The following of your personal data are collected, mandatory for the purpose(s) of the programme:

First name, last name, organisation/company, function/position, business address, country, business phone/mobile, email, social media handles

To join and participate in the BlueInvest Community, apply for investment readiness assistance, attend an event or receive training, you will be redirected to a third party tool. BlueInvest services users will be asked to sign up to the following platforms:

Please read each tool’s own privacy statement and disclaimers for further information.  

Other personal data

PwC and CARSA may ask you for additional information if required (e.g. for assessing business coaches and jurists), such as:

Address of residence, nationality, CV, competences, experiences, expertise by means of questionnaires, for example in the answers to feedback-related questions.

All data is compulsory for the purposes outlined above, unless indicated otherwise.

Personal data access rights and use in detail:

Your data is collected when you:

5. Who has access and to whom your data is disclosed?

PwC and CARSA, relevant CINEA and European Commission staff in charge of BlueInvest have access to your personal data on a need-to-know basis. In addition, only persons relevant for the performance of the services, including accredited business coaches, BlueInvest jury panel members, SME beneficiaries  of the assistance services, large enterprises, investors and other service providers selected by CINEA and the European Commission might have access to a limited subsection of your data if needed.

In addition, data may be disclosed to public authorities in accordance with Union and Member State law such as  for instance the European Court of Justice or a national judge as well as the lawyers and the agents of the parties in case of a legal procedure, the  European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the Internal Audit Service of the Commission, the Court of Auditors ,the European Ombudsman, the European Data Protection Supervisor and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

BlueInvest will not share your personal data with any third parties without your express consent.

All staff of contractors working for the European Commission and CINEA have signed non-disclosure agreements.

6. For how long is your personal data kept?

Your personal information is kept as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or to comply with the legal reporting or statistical reasons.

In case you are selected as a BlueInvest Business Coach, your personal data will be kept for 7 years after the end of relevant programme. In case you are not yet selected, your personal data is kept for the duration of the related programme’s activities for which you have registered. In case your application is not successful or withdrawn, your personal data may be retained up to 5 years after the end of the particular procedure to allow for all possible appeal. After this period your data will only be stored anonymised/encrypted for statistical usage.

7. How can you access your data, check its accuracy and, if needed, correct them?

Depending on the on-line service you are accessing, you can either:

1. Access, check, modify, update, delete your personal profile online yourself at any time.
2. Ask the data controller for the removal of your account by sending a message to blue-invest@lu.pwc.com.

To ensure the consistency of the platform and the coherence of its content, your contributions and comments will be kept on the platform but anonymised, even in case of an eventual removal of your profile.

For further information you may contact the BlueInvest team at blue-invest@lu.pwc.com.

8. Who are the contact points for questions or complaints?

If you have any queries about the processing of your personal information for the BlueInvest programme, you may address them to the Head of Unit D.3 “Sustainable Blue Economy” (entity acting as data controller) at the following address: blue-invest@lu.pwc.com (PwC is acting as data processor).

You shall have right of recourse at any time to the CINEA Data Protection Officer at CINEA-DPO@ec.europa.eu and to the European Data Protection Supervisor at https://edps.europa.eu.

9. Additional information:

Confidentiality

The users of the platform agree not to share any personal data they have access to with third parties beyond the scope of the services as described above.

Cookies

To make this site work properly, we sometimes place small data files called 'cookies' on your device. Most big websites do this too.

What are cookies?

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.

How do we use cookies?

A number of our pages use cookies to remember:

• your display preferences, such as contrast colour settings or font size
• non-identifiable data such as browsing behaviour within a session, to help us better understand member’s behaviour so we can increase the level of service
• to remember if you have agreed to our use of cookies on this site

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

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 this site may not work as intended.

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

How to control cookies?

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 placed. If you do this, however, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit a site and some services and functionalities may not work.

You can easily accept or reject the cookies on this site by selecting either of the following links: OK I agree / No, give me more info.

The system uses session "cookies" in order to ensure communication between the user and the server. Therefore, user's browser must be configured to accept "cookies". The cookies disappear once the session has been terminated.

Version August 2019