Privacy Policy.

1. Introduction and Commitment

The European Observatory for Transparency in Cooperatives (OETC) places the protection of your personal data at the heart of its mission. This privacy policy aims to inform you in a transparent way about how we collect, use, protect, and share your information, in accordance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) . Your trust is essential, and we are committed to handling your data with the utmost care and respect for your rights.

2. Data Controller

The association responsible for processing your personal data is:
Observatoire Européen pour la Transparence des Coopératives (OETC)
Head office: 200 rue de la Croix Nivert, 75015, Paris, France.

Association governed by the law of July 1, 1901.

3. Contact for Data Protection

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or wish to exercise your rights, you can contact our Data Protection Officer at the following e-mail address dpo@oetc-rights.eu

4. Data We Collect

We collect different types of data depending on your interaction with our services:

  • Identification and contact data Last name, first name, e-mail address, when you contact us via our form.

  • Reporting data All information, documents and testimonials that you voluntarily provide to us via our confidential reporting channel. This data may include sensitive information, which we handle with enhanced security measures.

  • Browsing data Technical information collected via cookies (IP address, browser type, pages visited), subject to your consent.

In line with our commitment to continuous improvement of our services, the categories of data collected may evolve. Any new data collection will be strictly linked to our corporate purposes, justified by the need to increase the effectiveness of our support to members, and will only take place after updating this policy and, if necessary, requesting your explicit consent.

5. Purposes and Legal Bases of Processing

We process your data for specific purposes and on the basis of clear legal grounds:

  • Respond to your contact requests (legal basis: our legitimate interest in communicating with you).

  • Analyze reports and provide assistance (legal basis: your explicit consent when you submit your case to us. For members, this is part of our membership contract).

  • Send our newsletter (legal basis: your consent).

  • To improve our website and services (legal basis: our legitimate interest in improving our offer).

  • Conduct systemic analysis and research (legal basis: our legitimate interest in pursuing our corporate purpose, using aggregated and anonymized data).

6. Our use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As part of our mission, we use artificial intelligence technologies to enhance our analytical capabilities, not to replace human judgment. Every process involving AI is supervised by our experts. AI is a tool we put at your service to:

  • Breaking down language barriers Translating and analyzing documents in different European languages to guarantee borderless support.

  • Increase the efficiency of human analysis Help our experts process large volumes of information (balance sheets, minutes) to identify patterns or potential anomalies more quickly.

  • Democratizing knowledge Helping to simplify complex legal concepts to make them easier to understand.

Important AI is never used to make automated decisions about you. The final analysis, conclusions, and advice are always the result of human expertise.

7. Sharing Your Data

We do not sell or rent your personal data. We only share it with trusted third parties and only when necessary:

  • Experts and partner lawyers If you are a member and give us your explicit consent, we may share your file information with lawyers in our network for specialized advice.

  • Technical service providers Web hosting, e-mail services, etc., who are contractually bound to respect the confidentiality of your data.

  • Competent authorities Only if we are required to do so by law.

8. Retention of Your Data

We keep your data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected. Data relating to a report is kept for the duration of the case analysis, then archived securely or anonymized.

9. Your rights

In accordance with the GDPR, you have the following rights:

  • Right of access Obtain a copy of the data we hold on you.

  • Right of rectification Correct any inaccurate information.

  • Right to erasure ("right to be forgotten") Request the deletion of your data.

  • Right to restriction of processing Freeze the use of your data in certain circumstances.

  • Right to portability Receive your data in a structured format.

  • Right to object You may object to the processing of your data for reasons related to your particular situation.

To exercise these rights, please contact us at dpo@oetc-rights.eu

10. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational security measures (encryption, access controls, etc.) to protect your data against destruction, loss, alteration, or unauthorized disclosure.

11. Modification of this Policy

We reserve the right to change this privacy policy at any time. Any changes will be posted on this page. We encourage you to consult it regularly.