Legal notice
My House of European History (“MyHEH”) is a website where citizens from all over Europe can share their personal memories and experiences through photographs, videos, audio files or documents. The aim is to create a unique, virtual collection of individual stories - from and for - Europe.
It acts as a forum for citizens to explain what Europe means to them and how they view their part in its history. It is a unique project, as the EP stays in the background and takes the role of a facilitator of communication between European citizens, sharing content created by citizens for citizens. Its objective is to gather and publish citizens’ stories in three different formats – text, audio and video – in 24 languages, thus creating a virtual library of testimonies from people across Europe.The Platform is managed by the My House of European History unit in the Directorate General for Translation in the European Parliament (“EP”).
This legal notice contains the general terms of use of the MyHEH website and the terms applicable to users (“Users”), namely to visitors consulting the website and its content (“Visitors”) as well as to contributors who submit a testimony (“Content”) to the MyHEH website to share their stories (“Contributors”). Consultations or contributions to the MyHEH website involve the full acceptance of the Terms of Use set out below (Terms of Use for visitors concerning the consultations and Terms of Use for contributors concerning the contributions). The MyHEH website is a platform owned by the European Parliament, in which personal data are processed. Information on how the MyHEH website processes personal data as well as on data subjects’ rights are presented in the dedicated Data Protection Statement section.
A. General Terms of Use for all Users
1. Service Licence
Subject to these Terms, Users are granted a personal, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, non-transferable, and revocable licence to access and use the MyHEH website. This licence allows Users to use the services of MyHEH as provided and in the manner permitted by these Terms.
Nothing in these Terms gives Users the right to claim ownership of any intellectual property rights in the services or the content provided by the European Parliament, including but not limited to, the European Parliament logos and registered trademarks. Users may use Content from MyHEH website only in accordance with the Terms of Use.
2. Code of conduct
Every User must guarantee that he/she will not use MyHEH website, content and services in a way that will:
a. infringe rights of the European Parliament or third parties, including but not limited to intellectual property rights, image rights or privacy rights;
b. discriminate on the grounds of and/or be offensive in respect of appearance, race, religion, sex, culture or origin;
c. incite violence against and/or harassment of other person(s);
d. lead to or be the result of exploitation or abuse of others;
e. be pornographic or that will contain a link to pornographic material or pornographic websites;
f. breach personal data of others and/or share personal data of minors;
g. promote or facilitate the committing of illegal activities;
h. involve chain letters, junk mail or spam and/or request passwords or other information traceable to individuals for commercial or illegal purposes, or which envisages other commercial purposes;
i. contain viruses, Trojan horses, worms, bots or other software that may damage automated work or data, render it unusable or inaccessible, delete or appropriate it, or that is intended to circumvent technical protection measures of the website and/or the European Parliament’s computer systems;
j. be in violation of any applicable legislation and regulations;
k. be in violation of any of the other provisions of these Terms of Use.
3. Intellectual Property policy
The European Parliament respects the intellectual property rights of third parties and expects Users to do the same when using the MyHEH website. The European Union reserves the right to remove any Content that infringes intellectual property rights of third parties and to suspend/terminate accounts of Users who repeatedly infringe copyrights, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights of others.
Any right holder that believes in good faith that content made available on the MyHEH website infringes her/his copyrights or trade mark rights, may send a notice to the platform administrators at my-european-history@europarl.europa.eu
4. Disclaimer
The European Parliament does not guarantee the accuracy and completeness of the website or its content.
Except to the extent required by applicable law, the European Parliament shall not be liable for any special, incidental, consequential, punitive or other damages arising out of the use of the MyHEH website or its content. In particular, the European Parliament shall not be liable for the following: inaccuracy, incompleteness, etc. of the website and its content; any use by third parties that goes beyond the rights expressed in these Terms of Use.
Information presented in the MyHEH website can be considered neither an authentic reproduction of the official texts nor as a faithful verbatim report of parliamentary debates. Only the official texts published in the Official Journal of the European Union may be considered authentic. The historical accuracy of the testimonies is neither verified by the MyHEH unit, nor is it the main goal of the Platform. The European Parliament cannot be held liable for direct or indirect damages, which may result from use of the MyHEH website. The European Parliament takes all possible steps to minimise disruption caused by technical errors. Some data or information on the MyHEH website may have been created or structured in files or formats that are not error-free. The European Parliament cannot in such cases guarantee that the service will not be interrupted or otherwise affected by such problems. The European Parliament accepts no responsibility in case of defective transmission of data due to the various networks of the internet or to incompatibilities due to the user's device.
The European Parliament cannot guarantee that information from external sources presented in the MyHEH website is reliable or up to date. The information on the MyHEH website may link to external sites or applications over which the European Parliament's services have no control and for which the European Parliament can accept no responsibility.
This disclaimer is not intended to limit the liability of the European Parliament arising from Article 340 TFEU.
B. Terms of Use for Visitors
1. Content Licence for Visitors
Visitors may reuse Content submitted to MyHEH website by Contributors only for educational and research purposes, provided that the source of the Content is acknowledged and appropriate credit is given to the relevant Content Contributor(s).
Visitors may not reuse Content submitted by Contributors to MyHEH for commercial purposes or any other purpose not specifically allowed in these Terms.
2. Code of conduct
Every Visitor must guarantee that he/she will not use the MyHEH website or any Content submitted through it, in breach of point A.2. of the General Terms of Use.
C. Terms of Use for Contributors
3. Registration
Contributors can submit Content (i.e. texts, photographs, images, videos, audio files, documents, etc.) to the MyHEH website only following the creation of a MyHEH user account, by indicating their first name, last name, e-mail address and, if they wish, a short description about themselves which will be displayed with their public profile in accordance with the present Terms of Use. Any citizen, including citizens of non-Member States of the European Union, aged 16 or over may share a personal testimony.
For information on the processing of users’ personal data performed by the MyHEH website, please consult the Data Protection Statement .
4. Testimony definition and rules
Testimony shall be understood to mean any written text (maximum 2 000 characters, including spaces), accompanied by a digitised artefact, be it (1) a photograph or set of photographs, or (2) a short film, or (3) an audio recording, or (4) a PDF document (i.e. Content).
The testimony has to be drafted in one of the official languages of the European Union.
A testimony must be personal and meaningful, and must respect the values enshrined in the EU Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union . It should refer to a relevant event in European history.
Testimonies submitted are reviewed by an editorial committee before publication. Testimonies considered as breaching the present Terms of Use, and in particular, testimonies containing explicit accusations against third parties will not be accepted and will not be published on the website.
5. Code of conduct
Every Contributor must guarantee that he/she will not distribute through the MyHEH website any Content in breach of point A.2. of the General Terms of Use.
The European Parliament reserves the right to refuse the publication of a contribution and/or one or more of its annexes, without creating any liability on its part towards the Contributor.
6. Content licence for the European Parliament
Contributors are responsible for, and retain all intellectual property rights to any Content that is submitted by them. Nevertheless, by submitting Content on or through MyHEH website, Contributors grant to the European Parliament a worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, perpetual, royalty-free, non-commercial, sub-licensable licence to use, copy, reproduce, adapt, translate, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute that Content in any and all media or distribution methods, now known or later developed for the purposes of operating, promoting or improving the MyHEH website or promoting the European Parliament activities.
Content may be disseminated and shared (e.g. made available for download) on European Parliament websites and websites linked to Europarl, European Parliament social media accounts as well as other websites and distribution channels of MyHEH. Any Content submitted by the contributors may be shared, in the form of a link, with the partners of MyHEH (list of partners available upon request under this email address ). The list of the MyHEH partners is updated every three (3) months.
7. Content licence for Visitors
Contributors also grant to Visitors of the MyHEH website a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to access their Content through the MyHEH website, and to use that Content, including reproducing, distributing, modifying, displaying, and performing it, as enabled by the MyHEH functionalities and only for educational and research purposes (as defined in the Terms of Use for Visitors).
8. Warranties
Every Contributor hereby warrants that:
a. he/she is the author and/or right holder of the uploaded Content and/or has obtained all necessary licences and consents from third parties having rights on such Content;
b. he/she is entitled to grant the European Parliament a licence to use the Content in accordance with these Terms;
c. no third party has any rights on the uploaded Content that could limit in any way the rights of the European Parliament resulting from these Terms;
submitted Content does not violate any laws or any third parties rights such as copyrights, trademarks, patents, image rights and privacy rights.
9. Liability
Contributors are fully responsible for their Content and are expressly required not to make defamatory statements and not to infringe or authorise any infringement of copyright, trademark, data protection and privacy law, or any other legal right.
The European Parliament accepts no responsibility or liability in such case and the Contributor(s) responsible will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising. Each contributor shall be liable for any loss or damage caused to the European Parliament or third parties by their unlawful conduct in the course of the Contributor’s use of the MyHEH website.
Contributors agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the European Parliament from and against any claims, lawsuits or proceedings arising from any breach of these Terms, including violations of third parties' copyrights and other intellectual property rights.
10. Suspension and termination
The European Parliament reserves the right to suspend or terminate access to MyHEHusers’ accounts if it considers that there are grounds for doing so, without creating any liability on its part towards the Contributors, and in particular in the event of failure to comply with any of the provisions of this Terms of Use.
Contributors are entitled to close their user account at any time.
D. Data Protection Statement
The European Parliament attaches great importance to respecting the right to data protection and the right to privacy. The processing described below is carried out in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC (hereinafter ‘the Regulation’) and in accordance with the Bureau Decision of the European Parliament of 17 June 2019 on the implementing rules relating to Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 (hereinafter ‘the European Parliament implementing rules’).
1. Data controller
The European Parliament is responsible for this processing of personal data. The entity responsible for this processing on behalf of the European Parliament is the Head of the My House of European History Unit, Mrs. Doris OBRZUT.
2. Purpose of the processing
The MyHEH website processes users’ personal data (also known as personal information) to provide visitors with information from volunteer contributors and to allow contributors to submit their own stories.
Users’ consultation (visitors):
The My House of European History website sets cookies in order to enable or enhance some functions offered within our pages. Besides the persistent and session cookies needed for this, analytics cookies might be set in order to monitor the navigation of users and improve the quality of their experience while visiting the MyHEH website. When landing on the MyHEH pages, a banner offers users two choices: either they accept explicitly the MyHEH cookie policy or they opt for refusing it. Please consult the cookie policy on the cookies page .
Users have also the possibility to present questions (such as on conditions of use, partnerships or technical advices) in a dedicated contact form . In this context, personal data are processed to address users’ questions.
Users’ contribution (contributors):
Contributions submitted on the MyHEH website are reserved to users who have created a MyHEH user account and accepted the present Terms of Use. The aim of a MyHEH user account (contributor account) is to allow any user to contribute and manage his/her own stories. The contributors’ accounts are classified as personal only if they can be used to identify users.
There are several ways to create a MyHEH user account, by entering an email address and by creating a password; or by using a Facebook, Twitter or Google login details.
If a user chooses to create a MyHEH user account with an email address, the application will use the email address provided to identify the user account.
If a user chooses to create a MyHEH user account using Facebook, Twitter or Google login details, the application will send a connection request respectively to Facebook, Twitter or Google asking to link the MyHEH user account to the Facebook, Twitter or Google account and will collect the email address and name from the associated Facebook, Twitter or Google profile. In that case, Facebook, Twitter or Google may collect data concerning the connection to the MyHEH user account. The connection to the MyHEH user account will remain active for the time predefined by the social media selected for the registration (Facebook, Twitter or Google). Therefore, it is strongly recommended that users first read:
- The Facebook’s privacy policy https://en-gb.facebook.com/privacy/explanation for Facebook services,
- The Twitter’s privacy policy https://twitter.com/en/privacy for Twitter services,
- The Google’s privacy policy https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en for Google services.
The MyHEH website uses these data to be able to identify users when they log on to the application, when they submit a contribution and for the publication of their contributions. Personal data provided by the contributors will be processed to create new products to be then distributed further.
The MyHEH website may use the e-mail addresses of contributors for a quality control process and send satisfaction surveys to the email addresses registered in the database. The data subject has the possibility to unsubscribe at any moment from the mailing list created with this purpose.
In the settings of the MyHEH user account, users can choose whether they want to provide additionally a short self-description and to show their name or user name with their contribution. The user name is kept if the user does not want to display his first and last name in a contribution. Self-description is used to display a short overview of a user in his/her public profile. A public profile is a unique page dedicated to show all stories contributed by a user.
3. Sharing MyHEH website’s contents on other social media platforms and networks
Users can share a link to content in the MyHEH website (contributions) on other social media platforms or networks. This sharing functionality can be accessed from each story, and allows to share a link through a Facebook or Twitter post, or to send it by email. Although presented in the MyHEH website, these external elements are independent and operate autonomously. It is recommended that users first read the privacy policies of the social media platforms or networks they wish to use. The European Parliament is not responsible for the publication on other websites following the share of contributions on this social media.
4. Legal basis of the processing
The lawfulness of the processing is based on:
· Article 5 (1.a) in the context of the performance of tasks carried out in the public interest by the European Parliament (the MyHEH website project being developed under an European Parliament decision to complete the online information presented by the House of European History);
· Article 5 (1.c) for the performance of the present Terms of Use establishing a contractual relationship between the user and the European Parliament;
all interpreted in the light of Preamble (Recital 22).
5. Categories of personal data used
Users’ consultation (visitors):
When a user consults the website, the following personal data are used:
· The information processed via cookies as presented in the cookies page (subject to user acceptance),
· The elements provided by the users via the dedicated form where they can present questions, including the theme and title of the message (question), the message (question) itself as well as the contact details of the requestor (first name, last name and emails).
Users’ contribution (contributors):
When an account is created, the following personal data are used:
· The account user’s credentials (either an email address and password or Facebook, Twitter or Google login details) as follows:
o Directly via the MyHEH website = email, password, last name, first name, user name, profile image
o Via Facebook = email, last name, first name
o Via Twitter = email, user name,
o Via Google = email, last name, first name
· A non-mandatory description of the user profile, which will appear on the user public profile once his/her story is published
· Data relating to the collection of the acceptance of the Terms of Use
When users present questions via the dedicated contact form:
· The user email address,
· The user first and last name,
· The title of the user message,
· The content of the user message.
For each story published, the MyHEH website saves the following data (those marked with an * are mandatory):
· * Story language to choose between 24 languages handled by the European Parliament
- * Story title
· * Start date of my story, and not mandatory End date
- * Story place
· * Associated topics: you can choose up to 3 topics which describe your story
- * Story summary: up to 255 characters
- * Complete story: up to 2000 characters
· Media: from one to 5 pictures and/or a video file, an audio file, a PDF document
Once a contribution submitted to the MyHEH website has been validated by the editorial committee and published, this following information will be visible to the public within the website:
- Profile image
· First and last name, or a custom user name if the user does not want to show his real name
- Story title
- Start date of the story
- End date of the story if contributed
- Place
- Topics (from one to three topics)
- Summary
- Full Story
- Media contributed
- Submission date
- Original language of the story
DATA PROCESSING
Storage of data
Personal data that are collected when a citizen creates an account are retained for the period of the existence of this account. Personal data of contributors is kept for as long as the publication of the contribution on the EP website is considered relevant for the purpose of the processing operation by the unit responsible for this processing operation, and the contribution remains available to all citizens who use the website. It may then be stored for historical purposes.
Users’ consultation (visitors):
For personal data related to the MyHEH cookies: Please consult the cookie policy on the cookies page .
- The exchanges are done via e-mails. All the emails sent by the citizens to the functional mailbox of “my-european-history@europarl.europa.eu” (via dedicated form) are stored in that mailbox for 90 days. After that time they are permanently deleted according to the Parliament’s email retention policy.
Users’ contribution (contributors):
For personal data related to a contribution: Personal data are kept for as long as publication of the related contribution on the MyHEH website is considered relevant to the purpose by the data controller, where the contribution is made available to all citizens who use the MyHEH website. The maximum period of storage for this data will be no longer than 10 years. It may then be stored for historical purposes. Users can view at any time each contribution on the Dashboard section, and can request modification or deletion of their contributions. Users can also request the deletion of their own contributions when deleting their accounts.
For personal data related to the MyHEH account: All users can view, modify or delete their personal information from their account at any time. Only the email address cannot be changed as it is this, which links an account to a user. In the case where the user wants to delete his/her account, an option is proposed to keep his/her published contributions or to delete them permanently.
Recipients of the personal data
The following entities may receive personal data relating to the services provided:
· Facebook, if the MyHEH user account is created via a Facebook account,
· Twitter, if the MyHEH user account is created via a Twitter account,
· Google, if the MyHEH user account is created via a Google account,
· Email providers where the MyHEH user account is created using an email address,
· Social media platforms or networks which the user selects to share content,
· Authorised European Parliament staff responsible for development, administration, maintenance and support in connection with the MyHEH website,
· Authorised EP staff responsible for moderation of stories,
· Relevant European Parliament services in charge of addressing users’ questions presented via the contact forms.
Data subjects rights
Users, as the data subjects, or their legal representatives, when applicable, may exercise the rights indicated hereafter - in the conditions presented in Chapter IV of the European Parliament implementing rules - by sending a request directly to my-european-history@europarl.europa.eu .
Data subjects have the right of access to their personal data and relevant information concerning how the data controller uses them [Article 17 of the Regulation]. They have the right to obtain the rectification of their inaccurate personal data and, taking into account the purposes of the processing, of their incomplete personal data [Article 18 of the Regulation]. Under certain conditions, they have the right to ask that the data controller deletes their personal data or restricts their use [Articles 19 and 20 of the Regulation]. They have the right to withdraw* their consent at any time to the processing of their personal data [Article 7 of the Regulation]. They have the right to object to the processing of their personal data, on grounds relating to their particular situation, at any time [Article 23 of the Regulation].
The data controller will consider each request, take a decision and communicate it to the requestor.
Data subjects have the right to consult at any time the Data Protection Officer of the European Parliament (DPO) via the email address data-protection@europarl.europa.eu and have recourse to the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) via the email address edps@edps.europa.eu.
Protection of rights of third parties
Contributors must ensure that any contribution submitted to the European Parliament via the MyHEH website is not in violation of rights of third parties such as transfer of personal data, reputation, commercial interests etc. Personal data of third parties may only be submitted to the European Parliament if they can be legally processed by the Institution, pursuant to the Data Protection principles stated in Article 4 of the Regulation.
The European Parliament reserves the right to erase or anonymise any personal data of third parties processing of which would not be in line with the Regulation. Any information or personal data contained in the contribution submitted to the European Parliament may be erased or anonymised in the event of violation of third party rights.
Persons whose personal data are processed have the right to access and rectify them. Persons whose rights are violated by the publication of an item of information or data may request deletion of such information or data. Requests to this end should be addressed to my-european-history@europarl.europa.eu .
The data subjects have the right to consult at any time the European Parliament Data Protection Officer ( data-protection@europarl.europa.eu ).