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The information on this site is subject to a disclaimer, a copyright notice rules related to personal data protection and cookies.
Disclaimer |
The European Commission maintains this website to enhance public access to information about its initiatives and European Union policies in general. Our goal is to keep this information timely and accurate. If errors are brought to our attention, we will try to correct them.
However the Commission accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on this site.
This information is:
Please note that it cannot be guaranteed that a document available on-line exactly reproduces an officially adopted text. Only European Union legislation published in paper editions of the Official Journal of the European Union is deemed authentic.
It is our goal to minimize 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. The Commission 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 the Commission in contravention of any requirements laid down in applicable national law nor to exclude its liability for matters which may not be excluded under that law.
Copyright notice |
© European Union, 1995-2012
Reuse is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged. The reuse policy of the European Commission is implemented by a Decision of 12 December 2011 .
The general principle of reuse can be subject to conditions which may be specified in individual copyright notices. Therefore users are advised to refer to the copyright notices of the individual websites maintained under Europa and of the individual documents. Reuse is not applicable to documents subject to intellectual property rights of third parties.
Personal Data Protection |
The European Union is committed to user privacy.
The policy on "protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions" is based on Regulation (EC) N° 45/2001 [234 KB] of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000.
This general policy covers the European Union's family of institutional Web Sites, within the eu domain.
Although you can browse through most of these Web Sites without giving any information about yourself, in some cases, personal information is required in order to provide the e-services you request.
Web Sites that require such information treat it according to the policy described in the Regulation mentioned above and provide information about the use of your data in their specific privacy policy statements.
In this respect:
The European Union's family of institutional Web Sites, within the eu domain, provides links to third party sites. Since we do not control them, we encourage you to review their privacy policies.
What is an e-service?
An e-service on EUROPA is a service or resource made available on the Internet in order to improve the communication between citizens and businesses on the one hand and the European Institutions on the other hand.
Three types of e-services are or will be offered by EUROPA:
Information contained in a specific privacy statement.
A specific privacy policy statement will contain the following information about the use of your data:
How do we treat e-mails you send us?
Many web pages on Europa have a "Contact" button, which activates your e-mail software and invites you to send your comments to a specific functional mailbox.
When you send such a message, your personal data is collected only to the extent necessary to reply. If the management team of the mailbox is unable to answer your question, it will forward your e-mail to another service. 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.
What are cookies?
To make this site function properly, we sometimes place small data files on your computer, known as cookies.
Most big websites or internet service providers do this too. Cookies help the site remember your settings – language, font size and other preferences for how you want to view the site on your computer - so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you come back to us.
Also, a number of pages on EUROPA show a survey box that asks you if the content was helpful or not. We store a cookie for this too, so we know not to show the box again once you've responded.
Our cookies are not used to identify you personally. They’re just there to make the site work better for you.
How you can control cookies
You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see AboutCookies.org.
You can delete all the cookies already on your computer and you can set most browsers to block them being placed. But if you do this, you may have to manually adjust some preferences every time you visit the site.
The Commission does not use cookies for any other purpose than those presented here and does not use them to collect any personal data for any other purpose.