Cookie Policy
When you browse this Website, we deploy cookies and collect Personal Data as necessary in order to ensure the technical functioning of this Website and of some of its functionalities and features (e.g., the Recite Me toolbar).
If you consent to it, your Personal Data will also be used for aggregated statistics (whose purpose is to help us monitor and improve the effectiveness of our Website) and for the delivery of the Recite Me toolbar.
You can find in this page instructions on how to manage your consent, regarding cookies.
For more information on how we process your Personal Data, please see the ACER Website Data Protection Notice.
Definitions
Cookies are small text files that may be sent to and registered on your computer by the websites you visit, to then be re-sent to those same sites when you visit them again. It is thanks to these cookies that those websites can “remember” your actions and preferences (e.g., login data, language, font size, other display settings, etc.), so that you do not need to configure them again when you next visit the website, or when you change pages within a website.
Cookies are used for electronic authentication, monitoring of sessions and storage of information regarding your activities when accessing a website. They may also contain a unique ID code which allows tracking of your browsing activities within a website, for statistical or advertising purposes. Some operations within a website may not be able to be performed without the use of cookies which, in certain cases, are technically necessary for operation of the website.
When browsing a website, you may also receive cookies from websites or web servers other than the website being visited (i.e., “third-party cookies”).
There are various types of cookies which may be stored on your computer for different periods of time and that may have different characteristics and functions:
- Essential cookies (also referred to as technical/functional cookies) – This category includes cookies which are only used to send messages through an electronic communications network, or which are needed to provide services you request. This includes, among others, cookies that allow users to login, cookies that are used to remember choices made by a user when accessing a website, such as products selected for purchase. Typically, this type of cookies does not require user’s consent;
- Non-essential cookies – This category may include, for example, “profiling cookies” (i.e., cookies used to create profiles on users and to send advertising messages in line with the preferences revealed by users while browsing websites) and “performance cookies” (i.e., cookies used to collect information about user’s behaviour on a website and other statistical information in order to measure the effectiveness of a website). Typically, this type of cookies requires specific consent from users, although this may vary according to the applicable law.
Cookie Policy
Use of cookies and other tracking technologies on the Agency’s Website
Technical functioning of the Website
The Agency uses cookies for the technical functioning of the Website, to activate specific functions within the Website, and to configure the Website according to your choices (e.g., regarding cookies, display preferences), in order to improve your experience.
| Technical name | Function and purpose | Duration |
| Cookie-agreed | Displays the cookies banner. | 3 months |
| Cookie-agreed-version | Keeps track of the user’s choices in relation to cookies subject to consent. | 3 months |
| SSESS* | Allows the proper functioning of the Content Management System (CMS) of the Website. | 23 days |
| Multimedia section – Power BI | ||
| WFESessionID | Necessary to enable a Power BI session, a Microsoft tool that helps visualize data. | Expires when session ends |
| ARRAffinitySameSite | Set by websites run on the Windows Azure cloud platform and used for load balancing to make sure the visitor page requests are routed to the same server in any browsing session and optimise response times. | Expires when session ends |
| ai_user | Collects statistical usage and telemetry information for apps built on the Azure cloud platform. This is a unique user identifier cookie enabling counting of the number of users accessing the application over time (statistical purposes). | 1 year |
| ai_session | Collects statistical usage and telemetry information for apps built on the Azure cloud platform. This is a unique anonymous session identifier cookie used to improve performance (performance purposes). | 30 minutes |
| Multimedia section – Audio files | ||
| sclocale | Set by SoundCloud to store the language settings of the user. | 1 year |
| ajs_anonymous_id | To store last visit. | 1 year |
| pxcts | Used to detect fraud and bot activity. | Until the user closes their browser |
| _pxvid | Used to detect fraud and bot activity. | 1 year |
| datadome | This a security cookie based upon detecting BOTS and malicious traffic. | 1 year |
| _px3 | To provide protection against hackers. | 1 year |
| _pxde | To provide protection against hackers. | 1 year |
| OptanonConsent | Stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. | 1 year |
| Multimedia section – YouTube embedded videos | ||
| YSC | Used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. | Expires when session ends |
| _Secure YEC | Stores the user's video player preferences using embedded YouTube video. | 13 months |
| Consent | This cookie stores information about how the end user uses the website and all advertising that the end user may have seen before visiting the said site. The main purpose of this cookie is Targeting/ Advertising. | 13 months |
| PREF | YouTube collects user data through videos embedded in websites, which is aggregated with profile data from other Google services in order to display targeted advertising to web visitors across a broad range of their own and other websites. This is a common Google cookie, used across several of their services. Stores user preference, can be used to personalise ads on Google searches. | 13 months |
| OptanonConsent | Stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. | 1 year |
| Extranet Cookies (enabled when you download documents stored on extranet.acer.europa.eu – applies only to old documents that were uploaded to SharePoint prior to the website migration to Drupal) | ||
| WSS_FullScreenMode and Search Session | Microsoft SharePoint cookie for internal use of the application to enable communication, identify the user session and/or exchange information with the content manager. | Expires when session finishes |
| FedAuth | Keeps track of the user’s session and access rights assigned to the user. | 5 days |
Cookie Policy
Europa Analytics
Europa Analytics is the corporate service, which monitors and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the Agency’s Website (as well as that of other EU institutions).
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. On top of that, the Agency has created a feature to manage users’ consent to the collection of users’ browsing experience for aggregated statistics.
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 (“pk_id”, that identifies unique visitors and expires in 28 days and “_pk_ses” that is used to temporarily store data for the visit and expires in 30 minutes) enable the European Commission to track the following information about visitors. We use this information to prepare aggregated 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
To improve the accuracy of the produced reports, information is also stored in a first-party cookie from our Website and then collected by Europa Analytics:
- Random unique Visitor ID
- Time of the first visit for the specific visitor
- Time of the previous visit for the specific visitor
- Number of visits for the specific visitor
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.
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.
By default, the browsing experience of our website visitors is NOT tracked by Europa Analytics. You may, though, choose to consent to contributing your browsing experience on our Website for us to produce aggregated statistics.
If you consent to Europa Analytics, then Europa Analytics is activated, and some relevant cookies loaded. You can always decide to withdraw your consent or consent again at any time.
If you wish to consent to (or withdraw your consent from) Europa Analytics, please click here.
Cookie Policy
Recite Me toolbar
The Agency has implemented the language and accessibility functionalities made available by Recite Me in order to increase the usability and inclusiveness of its Website. As noted in the ACER Website Data Protection Notice, the launch of the Recite Me toolbar (and the processing of your Personal Data connected to the use of the Toolbar) is based on your prior consent that you provide by clicking on the Recite Me icon on the top right corner of the website. Should you consent to it, the following cookies will be installed in order to allow you to use the toolbar.
| Recite.Persist | Allows the Recite Me toolbar to persist across subsequent web pages of the Website, once the Recite Me toolbar is launched (this cookie is only deployed when the Recite Me toolbar is launched by the user) | 2-day expiry unless manually cleared from the browser cookies |
| Recite.Preferences | Remembers user’s accessibility settings on the Recite Me toolbar so that these can be loaded automatically on subsequent web pages of the Website (this cookie is only deployed when a choice is made by a user that has launched the Recite Me toolbar in relation to the settings made available on the toolbar). | 2-day expiry unless manually cleared from the browser cookies. |
Should you wish to withdraw your consent to the processing of your Personal Data for the purpose of the use of the Recite Me toolbar, click here.
Cookie Policy
Do not track preferences
Do Not Track is a function that allows visitors no to be tracked by websites. Do Not Track options are available in a number of browsers including:
If you enable the Do Not Track option in your web browser, we will respect your choice and your browsing experience on our Website will not be tracked.
For more information on how to set the preferences for cookies via your browser, please also refer to the following instructions:
CAUTION: If you block or delete technical/function cookies used by the Website, the Website may become impossible to browse, certain services or functions of the Website may become unavailable or other malfunctions may occur. In this case, you may have to modify or manually enter some information or preferences every time you visit the Website.