Cookies policy

Europa Analytics is the corporate service, which monitors and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the CBE JU website (and the European Commission’s websites, as well as the other websites the Commission data centre hosts). It uses an open-source analytics platform, Matomo (formerly Piwik), fully controlled by the European Commission. This platform enables the protection of end-user personal data thanks to features such as IP address de-identification.

Europa Analytics is configured to use the second level domain europa.eu (used by the websites of European institutions) and to store first-party cookies. Cookies (from Matomo) used by Europa Analytics enable the European Commission, and the CBE JU, to track the following information about visitors. We use this information to prepare aggregated, anonymous statistics reports of visitors’ activity:

• IP address (masked)
• Location: country, region, city, approximate latitude and longitude (Geolocation)
• Date and time of the request (visit to the site)
• Title of the page being viewed (Page Title)
• URL of the page being viewed (Page URL)
• URL of the page that was viewed prior to the current page (Referrer URL)
• Screen resolution of user's device
• Time in local visitor's time-zone
• Files that were clicked and downloaded (Download)
• Links to an outside domain that were clicked (Outlink)
• Pages generation time (the time it takes for webpages to be generated by the webserver and then downloaded by the visitor: Page speed)
• Main language of the browser being used (Accept-Language header)
• Browser version, browser plugins (PDF, Flash, Java, …) operating system version, device identifier (User-Agent header)
• Language of the visited page
• Campaigns
• Site Search
• Events

The European Commission retains full control of the data collected through first-party cookies by storing the data in servers fully owned and controlled by the European Commission itself. The CBE JU receives the data for the purpose of creating and assessing usage statistic reports.

Besides some session cookies, a random ID persistent cookie is generated by Matomo, which allows Europa Analytics to identify when a user returns to the site. This cookie has an expiration date of 13 months, after which it is automatically removed from the user's device.

• First party cookies are cookies set by the website you’re visiting – i.e our website in this case. Only this website can read them. In addition, a website might potentially use an external service to analyse how people are using their site. Europa Analytics sets their own cookie to do this and does not use external parties.
• Persistent cookies are cookies saved on your computer and are not deleted automatically when you close your browser, unlike a session cookie, which is deleted when you close your browser.

By default, the browsing experience of our website visitors is not tracked by Europa Analytics (only functional cookies are enabled).

You may, though, choose to consent to contributing your browsing experience on our website for us to produce anonymised statistics – you can choose the type of cookies from the cookies pop-up bar displaying at the bottom of a page on our website.

If you click on “I refuse” in your web browser, we will respect your choice and your browsing experience on our website will not be tracked for the cookies which you have selected. Only the cookies necessary for running the website will then apply.

These cookies maybe set on our website during short periods of time, depending on the tools we use from partners for organising our events, and for which an alternative is not feasible. These cookies may be used by third parties to build a profile of our interests.

They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device.

Only two cookies are in scope: one for making our website social media ready; and one to help website owners track visitor behaviour and measure site performance.

All analytics data communication is encrypted via HTTPS protocol. The analytical reports generated by Europa Analytics can only be accessed through the European Commission Authentication System (EULogin) by authorised Commission staff dealing with Matomo, the relevant CBE JU staff or by duly authorised external sub-contractors, who may be required to analyse, develop and/or regularly maintain certain sites.

Note: institution, city and country of origin for statistical purposes may be determined from the full IP, then stored and aggregated before a mask is applied. Europa Analytics uses an IP de-identification mechanism that automatically masks a portion of each visitor's IP (Internet Protocol), effectively making it impossible to identify a particular Europa visitor via the sole IP address.

The CBE JU is active on three social media platforms.

Our website does not set cookies when displaying links to our social media channels when you browse our website. You can watch the videos on our website and follow links from our website to Twitter and LinkedIn. The following applies:

• YouTube™: In order to watch a video on our website, a message will alert you that you need to accept YouTube cookies to do so. YouTube has its own cookie and privacy policies over which we have no control. There is no installation of cookies from YouTube until you consent to YouTube cookies and then are redirected to the YouTube website.
• LinkedIn™: Similarly, by clicking on the LinkedIn button on our website, you will be redirected to the LinkedIn site, which has its own cookie and privacy policies over which we have no control.
• Twitter™: the display of our Twitter feed on this website uses a cookie-free component. Clicking on the Twitter icon on this website will re-direct you to the Twitter site, which has its own cookie and privacy policies over which we have no control.

You can enquire us about the way we use cookies, contact us at cbe-ju [at] cbe.europa.eu.