Privacy Policy

This website is owned and operated by the Council for Occupational Therapists in the European Countries (COTEC), a non-governmental organization registered under the German Law. The organisation’s address is 76307, Karlsbad, Germany.

COTEC takes the protection of your privacy very seriously and recognises its obligations as a Data Controller in terms of applicable data protection law, mainly the General Data Protection Regulation EU 2016/679, together with other laws which relate to privacy and electronic communications.

We are committed towards compliance with the principle of accountability and the 6 GDPR Data Protection Principles:

  • Lawfulness, fairness and transparency; to process personal data lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner;
  • Purpose Limitation; to process personal data for specified, explicit and legitimate and compatible purposes;
  • Data Minimisation; to process personal data only as is adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes;
  • Accuracy; to process personal data which is accurate and up to date
  • Storage Limitation; to process personal data for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it was processed;
  • Integrity and Confidentiality; to process personal data in a manner that ensures appropriate security of the personal data;

One of your rights is that you must be informed when personal data (information which directly or indirectly identifies you – is ‘processed’). You also have the right to know the details and purpose of that processing. This privacy policy describes our practices relating to the personal data of visitors of this website. It is meant to help you understand what information we collect, why we collect it and how you can update, manage, and delete your personal data.

For all our services, the ‘data controller’ that is responsible for your privacy, is COTEC. In this privacy policy “We/our/us” means COTEC and the service relates to the www.coteceurope.eu website you are presently on.

If you have any questions about how we protect your privacy, get in touch here: info@coteceurope.eu

Data we process

All the personal data which we collect about you through this website is given to us only if you choose to give it to us.

Such personal information may be requested from you when you fill in a field or a form (e.g. to contact us or avail of a service). We do NOT require any personal data for you to operate and benefit from the main, free function, of this site – and that is to obtain general information about the work carried out by COTEC and sharing of information.

If you provide personal data to us about someone else you should ensure that you are entitled to disclose that personal data to us and that, without us taking any further steps, we may collect, use and disclose that personal data as described in this privacy policy.

When you browse our website we also collect information about your device and originating IP which is then used for anonymised statistical analysis of data and browsing patterns on our site.

Ground for processing

  • To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • For our legitimate interests or those of a third party; A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.
  • Where you have given consent; Where we apply your consent as a basis to process personal data we acknowledge that you may withdraw such consent at any time – in which case, unless there is another lawful ground which permits us to continue to process the personal data, we shall cease to process that personal data. Before giving us your consent please be sure that you understood what we are asking your consent for.

Retention period

We will hold on to your information for no longer than is necessary keeping in mind the purpose/s (or compatible purposes) for which we first collected the data and the purposes set out in this privacy policy.

We may also keep hold of some of your information if it becomes necessary or required to meet legal or regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, prevent fraud and abuse, or enforce our terms and conditions.

Different retention periods apply for different types of data and different criteria will apply for the determination of retention periods. The retention periods we apply take account of:

  • Legal and regulatory requirements and guidance;
  • Minimum retention periods provided by law;
  • Laws which require retention of periods for undefined terms, including the GDPR;
  • Laws which grant special powers to authorities to investigate or act within periods commencing after discovering breaches;
  • Prescriptive Limitation periods that apply in respect of taking legal action;
  • Good practice; and
  • The operational requirements and the nature of our business.

In general, however all personal data is destroyed or anonymised with four (4) years from last processing date.

Data sharing

We do not, and will not, sell any of your personal data to any third party.

In the course of our business it may be necessary for us share your data with the following categories of persons/companies/entities as an essential part of being able to provide our services, as set out in this statement:

  • Hosting Company: With One.com since we host this site on their server.
  • Our Affiliate organisations: ENOTHE, ROTOS, OT-Europe especially in the case of Register of Experts.

Your rights

You enjoy several rights relating to your personal information:

  1. The right to be informed about how your personal information is being used. We need to be clear with you about how we process your personal data. We do this through this Privacy Policy, which we will keep as up to date as possible.
  2. The right to access the personal information we hold about you; You can access the personal data we hold on you by contacting us on info@coteceurope.eu. To process your request, we will ask you to send us proof of identity so that we can be sure we are releasing your personal data to the right person. We will carry out our best efforts to process your request within one (1) week or, if the request is particularly complex, two (2) weeks. We can provide you with a copy of your personal data in electronic format or hard copy. If we consider the frequency of your requests as being unreasonable, we may refuse to comply with your request. In those circumstances, if you disagree, you can complain to the German data protection authority.
  3. The right to request the correction of inaccurate personal information we hold about you;
  4. The right to request that we delete your data or stop processing it or collecting it; You can ask us to delete your personal data as long as such deletion is not prejudicial to obligations we may have.
  5. The right to stop direct marketing messages;
  6. The right to object to certain processing based on legitimate interest; You have a right to object to our use of your personal information including where we use it for our legitimate interests or where we use your personal information to carry out profiling using automated means.
  7. The right to withdraw consent for other consent-based processing at any time;
  8. The right to request that we transfer or port elements of your data either to you or another service provider; You have the right to move, copy or transfer your personal data from one organisation to another. If you do wish to transfer your personal data, we would be happy to help.

If you want to exercise your rights, have a complaint, or just have questions, please contact us here info@coteceurope.eu