Political Research Group (‘we’) are committed to protecting your privacy and being transparent about what information we may hold about you.

This notice (together with our terms of use and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you or that you provide to us is collected and processed by us, whether online (through ‘our Site’: politicalresearchgroup.com), via telephone, email, in letters or in any other correspondence or from third parties.

Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

This privacy notice covers the following:

•     Who we are

•     Information we may collect

•     How your personal data may be used

•     Cookies we use

•     Sharing your personal data with third parties

•     Your rights

•     How long we store your data for

•     Changes to our privacy notice

•     Contact us

Who we are

Political Research Group is an independent policy institute based in Romania. Our mission is to help build a sustainably secure, prosperous and just world.

We take great care to comply with the requirements of data protection law in force in Romania, relating to the processing of your personal data.

Information we may collect

We may collect and process the following personal data about you:

Personal data that you provide by filling in forms on our Site. This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our Site, subscribing to our service, posting material or requesting further services and might include:

• First name
• Last name
• Gender
• Date of birth
• Email (for login)
• Address
• Postcode
• Telephone number

We may also ask you for:

• Information when you report a problem with our Site.
• Information relating to your area of expertise as a result of communicating with us.
• Information that we obtain from you when you are taking part in an event or making a donation may, in addition to the above, include credit card, debit card or bank account details, but such information will be securely stored and processed only by our payment provider, Asociatia Grupul de Cercetări Politice and will not be held by us.

If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.

We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.

Sensitive personal data:

Information that we obtain from you when you apply for a role at Political Research Group. This may include sensitive information such as:

• Racial or ethnic origin
• Religious beliefs
• Physical and mental health details
• Trade union membership
• Sexual orientation
• Commission of criminal offences and/or involvement in criminal proceedings

Information we get about your use of our Site and services:

We may also collect information about your usage of the Site (see the section below entitled Cookies we use), which may include:

• Traffic data
• Location data
• Weblogs and other communication data
• The resources that you access, such as text journals, newspaper articles or our library catalogue

Information from third parties:

We may also receive information about you from third party event co-organizers or project funders. This can include your personal data such as:

• Your name
• Postal address
• Email address
• Emergency contact details
• Dietary requirements
• Telephone number
• What browser you are using
• Your IP addresses
• The computer operating system you are using

From the public domain:

We may obtain some information from publicly available sources such as news articles or open postings on social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

How your personal information may be used

We may use information held about you in the following ways:

• to enhance content on our Site and its technical performance
• to provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes
• to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, for example if you take up employment with us. If you unsuccessfully apply for a job at Political Research Group, your personal information will be held for 12 months after the recruitment exercise has been completed and will then be destroyed or deleted
• to allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so
• to invite you to events ran by us or our co-partners
• to administer your donations or support your fundraising
• to notify you about changes to our service
• to fulfil orders for goods and services
• to administer your membership
• to carry out in-house research and analysis, marketing statistics or equal opportunities monitoring
• to approach you for charitable funding where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes
• to monitor customer traffic patterns, Site usage and related Site information in order to optimize your use of our Site; data collected in this way will be aggregated and anonymized and the statistics may be shared with a reputable third-party (but it will not include any information personally identifying you)

For virtual conferences, your name, job title and company name will appear on the participant list through the official conference networking system enabling participants to connect with you during the conference.

You can opt out of your data being used for any of the Purposes of Use by accessing our preference area.

The lawful basis we rely on when processing your personal data:

Our processing of your personal data is lawful because it is necessary for us to hold and use your personal data so that we can perform our obligations under the contract we have entered into with you;

Legitimate interest:

We may process your personal data relying on legitimate interests basis for certain business purposes which we believe will benefit not only us but also our supporters and people who we identify as potential supporters of the Institute.

Those carefully considered and specific purposes might for example include the following:

• inviting potential speakers and participants in a business / professional capacity to our meetings or events.
• engaging with individuals holding relevant policy-making positions, hand-picked experts, corporate professional individuals, journalists and those working in other relevant sectors in a business / professional capacity.

Cookies we use

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your devices when you visit our website via internet browsers. Our use of cookies is to primarily help enhance your user experience and improve the efficiency of our website.

What cookies do we use?

Essential cookies – These make our websites work and provide the basic functions of the website.

Performance cookies – Performance cookies also allow us to see if there are any technical issues on our websites and if you are experiencing any issues using our websites. We use Analytics cookies to help us understand how you use our services. They also allow us to look at usage statistics and performance.

Targeting cookies – We use these types of cookies and similar technologies to provide adverts that we think may be more relevant to your interests. This can be based on your browsing activity and is known as Online Behavioural Advertising or OBA. Cookies are placed on your browser, which remembers what websites you’ve been to. Advertising based on what you have been viewing is then displayed.

Types of cookies

If the cookie comes from our site it is a first party cookie. If it comes from another site, such as our marketing services or ad technology providers or business partners, it is a third party cookie, specifically chosen by us to provide a service, such as a more personalised visit for example from our website service providers, advertising partners and social media service providers.

How long do cookies last?

Different cookies can last for different lengths of time.

• Persistent cookies consist of a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, which will be stored by the browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). Persistent or tracking cookies are employed to store user preferences and allow to customize how we present information through site layouts or themes.
• Session cookies are used by the server to store information about user page activities only during a session and will expire when the web browser is closed.

Consent to use cookies and managing cookies settings

The law states that we can store cookies on your device if they are essential to the operation of the Site. Essential cookies enable core functionality such as page navigation and access to secure areas. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and they can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.

To set all other cookies, we need your permission. Consent for non-essential cookies is sought when you first access the Site and can be managed via the Cookie settings link in the footer of our Site. You can follow that link to turn these cookies off.

You can also manage which cookies you receive via your web browser. Most browsers have built in privacy settings that provide differing levels of cookie acceptance, expiration time, and disposal.  can set your browser settings not to accept cookies – please follow your browser provider’s instructions to do so.

You can find more information about cookies, including how to manage and delete them, at www.aboutcookies.org, www.allaboutcookies.org or www.civicuk.com/cookie-control/browser-settings.  However, please note that some of our Site features may not function as a result of removing cookies.

Sharing your personal information with third parties

We may share your personal data with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries:

We may also share your personal data with third parties in the following circumstances:

• In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. In such circumstances, we will ensure that our processing of your personal data is fair and lawful and your rights and freedoms in respect of the processing of your personal data are adequately and appropriately protected.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements; or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Political Research Group, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of terrorism, fraud protection and credit risk reduction
• We may need to use certain service providers to carry out work on our behalf such as, for example, fulfilment companies, event partners or program funders. Where we enter into a relationship with an external party that would involve the processing of your personal data on our behalf, any such arrangements will be subject to a formal agreement between Political Research Group and that organization, aimed to protect the security of your data
• Hotels, airlines and travel agencies should Political Research Group arrange your travel and accommodation, for example, if you are an invited guest speaker for one of our events
• When working with partners to deliver an online or physical event, registration details may be shared with event partners for the purposes of monitoring attendance.

Whenever we share your personal data with third parties, it will be done lawfully, fairly and transparently and we will ensure that your rights and freedoms in respect of the processing of your personal data are adequately and appropriately protected. We will not sell your data to any third party.

Your rights

Withdrawing your consent:

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for marketing and donation request purposes. We will always inform you (before collecting your data) if we intend to use your data for such purposes and, where required, we will seek your consent.

You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by accessing our preference area.

Our Site may, from time to time, contain links to and from external websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Accessing and managing your personal information

You have the right to request a copy of your personal data by making a ‘subject access request’ under General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and to have any inaccuracies corrected.

You also have the following rights:

•       to request us to erase your personal data

•       to request us to restrict our processing of your personal data

•       to object to the way in which we are processing your personal data.

How long we store your data for

We will hold your personal data on our systems for as long as is necessary to operate the service in accordance with legal requirements and tax accounting rules.

Where your information is no longer required, we will ensure it is disposed of in a secure manner.

Changes to our privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last reviewed and updated on 10 February 2023.

Any changes we may make to our privacy notice in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email.

By continuing to use our site, you shall be deemed to have accepted such changes.

Contact us

If you have any questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice you can email us: office@politicalresearchgroup.com