Last Update: January 2025
Introduction: Importance of personal data protection and purpose of this notice
“FratiniVergano – European Lawyers” (FratiniVergano) is a law firm with its registered office in 1200 Brussels (Belgium), Boulevard Brand Whitlock 144. This Data Protection Notice aims to provide you information about how FratiniVergano (we, us, our) collects and processes your personal data, as we recognise the important implications of their use and disclosure both for us and for the individuals whose personal data we process.
We are committed to lawfully and rightfully process personal data in accordance with the EU’s Regulation (EU) 2016/679 on General Data Protection (GDPR).
The content of this Notice applies to the processing of personal data by FratiniVergano in connection with client services (for the purpose of providing professional services – judicial and out-of-court legal assistance); visitor services (including the dispatch of a fortnightly legal newsletter); recruitment activities; supplier services (please note that any reference to “clients” or “suppliers” includes their employees or other staff whose personal data we process).
Who is the data controller?
FratiniVergano is the data controller under the GDPR and is represented, for these purposes, by Alessandra Fratini (privacy@fratinivergano.eu).
What information do we collect about you?
We may collect the following personal data:
- Identity Data, including your name, surname, date and place of birth, nationality, bank account information, professional position, and your CV;
- Contact Data, including your postal address, e-mail address, telephone number or other data that may reasonably be linked to this information.
We do not collect special categories of personal data about you (such as details about your race or ethnicity, information about your health/genetic/biometric data, religious/philosophical beliefs, sex life, sexual orientation, political opinion, trade union membership). In limited circumstances, especially when this is necessary for a specific service we are providing or when we are required to do so for legal or regulatory purposes (i.e., prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing), we do collect information about your criminal convictions and offences.
How do we use the information about you?
We only process your personal data when we have a legal basis for processing, namely in the following circumstances:
- Contract performance: where your information is necessary to enter into or perform our contract with you for our professional activities (establishment, exercise or defence of legal claim to those clients specifically requesting such services; recruitment);
- Consent: where you have consented to our use of your information and you may withdraw your consent through an unsubscribe or similar tool (dispatch of the fortnightly newsletter “Trade Perspectives”; recruitment activities);
- Legal or regulatory obligations: where we need to use your information to comply with our legal obligations (tax returns; prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing);
- Legal claims: where your information is necessary for us to defend, prosecute, or make a claim against you, us or a third party;
- Our legitimate interest: where we use your information for a legitimate interest and our reasons for using it outweigh any prejudice to your data protection rights (providing legal updates for business development purposes; monitoring how our website is used, to ensure that its security is maintained).
Your personal data may be part of a list of contact details shared internally amongst the staff of FratiniVergano for the abovementioned purposes on a “need-to-know” basis.
For all purposes other than the subscription to Trade Perspectives, your personal data will be stored in our databases for no longer than five years.
Change of purposes
We only use your personal data for the purposes for which they have been collected. If we need to use your personal data for a different and unrelated purpose, we shall notify you.
How do we protect your personal data?
For us, information security is an integral element of data privacy. While no data transmission (in particular over the Internet) can be guaranteed to be secure from unauthorised or unlawful access, we implement commercially reasonable physical, technical, and procedural measures to help protect personal data from unauthorised access or use, including accidental loss, destruction, or damage.
What are your rights?
The processing of personal data by FratiniVergano shall be without prejudice to all the rights conferred to you as data subject by Articles 15 to 21 of the GDPR:
- Access: you have the right to ask us whether we are keeping personal data about you, to have access to your personal information and to receive a copy of it within 30 calendar days after the request is made.
- Portability: you have the right to request that your personal data are provided to you, or to another data controller, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format;
- Accuracy: you have the right to obtain from FratiniVergano the rectification without undue delay of inaccurate or incomplete personal data;
- Erasure: you have the right to obtain from FratiniVergano the erasure without undue delay of your personal data, or restriction of their processing;
- Objecting: you have the right to object at any time to the processing of your personal data for direct marketing purposes, which includes profiling to the extent that it is related to such direct marketing;
- Security: you have the right to have your personal data protected from unlawful processing or accidental loss, destruction or damage caused by intentional or untimely concealment, and the right for protection from information which is unreliable or harms the person’s honour, dignity and business reputation;
- Complaints: you have the right to lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority (Autorité de protection des données – APD, www.privacycommission.be/en) to safeguard your rights of personal data protection;
- Withdrawal of consent: you have the right to withdraw your consent to processing your personal data at any time without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.
For all requests, including questions about our Data Protection Notice, please send an e-mail to: privacy@fratinivergano.eu.
Third parties
We may disclose your personal data to our professional advisors (legal, financial, accounting advisors) and to a third-party service provider only for the purposes of providing IT assistance and maintenance to the firm. The professional advisors and service provider will have access to your personal data only to perform the aforementioned tasks on our behalf and we will remain responsible for their handling of your personal data as per our instructions.
Changes to our Data Protection Notice
We keep our Data Protection Notice under regular review and will provide any updates on this web page.
Trade Perspectives©
Trade Perspectives© is a fortnightly legal newsletter issued with the purpose of informing on recent developments on international trade and stimulating reflections on the legal and commercial issues involved. Trade Perspectives© does not constitute legal advice and is not, therefore, intended to be relied on or create any client/lawyer relationship. Trade Perspectives© is not issued for promotional or commercial purposes.
The recipients of Trade Perspectives© may, at any time, request to stop receiving the newsletter and to have their personal information (collected only for the purpose of the provision of this service) deleted from our database.
Your personal data, notably your e-mail address, voluntary submitted to us for the subscription of Trade Perspectives© will only be stored as long as you wish to receive Trade Perspectives©. Every three years we will remind you of your rights under this Data Protection Notice.For all requests please contact TradePerspectives@fratinivergano.eu