Regulation (EC) N° 45/2001 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data applies to processing operations of personal data carried out by the European Ombudsman.

The purpose of this processing operation is to launch an online survey in order to obtain feedback from our external stakeholders in relation to Strategy and Governance issues concerning the Ombudsman's office. The European Ombudsman's Strategy for the mandate 2009-2014 (available on the Ombudsman's website) highlights the need, under Objective 1, to listen to our stakeholders, be open to their suggestions and identify best practices.

The survey is carried out through the IPM (Interactive Policy Making) survey tool on the EUROPA website. Individual responses will be processed in accordance with Regulation 45/2001 and the European Ombudsman's privacy statement.

The Ombudsman will only have access to the content of the answers in an anonymous form and will not be informed of the identity of the respondents. The survey outcome is a statistical analysis of the responses. No personal data is included in the survey report.

The survey website uses a session cookie which is essential for parts of the survey site to operate and which has already been set. It will be deleted when you submit the web survey.

The Ombudsman will keep the data for the time necessary to fulfil the purpose of collection or further processing. It will be deleted once the survey is closed and the results of the survey have been aggregated by category of stakeholder. The anonymised, aggregated results will be kept indefinitely.

The controller is the European Ombudsman.

Information is given through this specific privacy notice in addition to the general EUROPA privacy notice and the privacy notice on the Ombudsman's website.

Please note that you have the right to obtain access to, and rectification of, your personal data. You may also under certain circumstances ask to have these data blocked and for the erasure of data about you which you consider to have been unlawfully processed. Finally, you have the right to object to the processing of your personal data at any time, on legitimate compelling grounds relating to your particular situation.

To exercise your rights or to obtain any further information, you may apply directly to the Ombudsman. You may also apply to the Ombudsman's Data Protection Officer. Finally, you have the right of recourse at any time to the European Data Protection Supervisor if you consider that your rights under Regulation 45/2001 have been infringed as a result of the processing of your personal data by the Ombudsman.