Privacy Statement

Christoph Merian Verlag is an institution of the Christoph Merian Foundation (CMS). We of CMS respect your privacy. The protection of your privacy is an important concern of ours, both when processing personal data and when securing any personal information. This privacy statement explains which of your data we process, the uses to which we put this information, and how you can object to processing and use of your data.

We collect, process and store personal data in strict accordance with statutory provisions or with your express consent, for example within the context of a registration. The definition of personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person.

Personal data we collect and process
We collect personal data solely within the framework of our relations to you. The collected data particularly includes your contact details, such as name, phone number, address or E-Mail address, and other information particularly in connection with your use of our website or your registration for our e-newsletter. By contrast, not classified as personal data is any information that cannot be related to your identity, e.g. statistical information on the user numbers of our online services.

How do we collect personal data?
We collect your personal data when you: visit our website, enter direct communication with us, register for our e-newsletter or for our events, take part in a survey, share personal data with us for any other reasons, or order products of Atelier Mondial. In all these cases, we process personal data solely for the intended, specific, and to the user discernible purpose. A prior consent can be revoked at any time regarding future uses but will not affect data already processed.

Do we transfer personal data?
Your personal data may be passed on by us to third parties. This is the case, for example, if we are supported by external service providers in the administration of databases, the processing of payment orders and mailings or the processing of funding applications.

External service providers processing data on our order are bound by the Federal Act on Data Protection to comply with the relevant security rules. We have ascertained that our external service providers operate a privacy policy themselves. In case they wish to assign the processing of personal data to a third party, they must obtain our prior consent and must guarantee security precautions. During our business activities, we do occasionally, and only insofar as it is permitted and necessary, send data to third parties abroad.

Can your personal data be processed by artificial intelligence (AI) applications?
For the efficient organisation of our internal processes, data records provided by you (e.g. funding applications including uploaded enclosures and other correspondence) may be passed on to third parties for processing by AI systems.

For how long do we store personal information?
As a rule, we store data for the duration of our contractual relationship with you or for as long as we have a legitimate interest in storing your data. In all other cases, we delete your personal information, except for the data we are obliged to store by law (e.g. due to statutory storage periods).

Which data is processed when you visit our websites?
You can basically visit our websites without submitting your personal data. Each access is temporarily stored in a log file on the server of our website. This involves the following technical data:
 

•          date and time of access
•          web page from which you come to our site, possibly with search terms
•          name and URL of visited file
•          conducted searches
•          your computer’s operating system (given by the user agent)
•          your browser (given by the user agent)
•          device type in case of access by cell phone
•          used transmission protocol
•          IP address

Collecting and processing these data serves the purposes of system security and stability, fault and performance analysis as well as internal statistical data, and allows us to constantly improve our internet service. The IP address is moreover used for presenting the website’s language. Finally, for keeping track of website visits we use cookies as well as tools and applications. You will find more detailed information in the next section.

What are cookies and how are they used?
Cookies are small text files or text information that during your visit are placed on your computer. If you call up our website again, your browser sends the cookies back to us and so allows us to automatically recognize you as a return visitor. Cookies help us to constantly improve our website and to facilitate navigation for you. CMS uses cookies on its website solely as a technical tool and does not use cookie data for marketing purposes.

In case you decide against cookies, you can disable and delete them any time. For further information please consult your browser’s Help and Support sections. However, please note that deactivating all or some cookies may reduce the functionality of some of our sites. Moreover, when using a different browser or terminal you have to disable or deactivate the cookies once again.

What are cookies and how are they used?
Cookies are small text files or text information that during your visit are placed on your computer. If you call up our website again, your browser sends the cookies back to us and so allows us to automatically recognize you as a return visitor. Cookies help us to constantly improve our website and to facilitate navigation for you. CMS uses cookies on its website solely as a technical tool and does not use cookie data for marketing purposes.

In case you decide against cookies, you can disable and delete them any time. For further information please consult your browser’s Help and Support sections. However, please note that deactivating all or some cookies may reduce the functionality of some of our sites. Moreover, when using a different browser or terminal you have to disable or deactivate the cookies once again.

What are tracking tools and how are they used?
Tracking tools are web analysis services which, by using cookies, provide us with data for evaluating the use of our websites. These are services which anonymize all data. This statistical information on the use of our online services (particularly website and newsletter) allows us to work on a user-friendly design, to carry out range measurements, and to conduct market research. Tracking tools are used for these purposes. They collect data which is analyzed with the help of cookies and results in usage profiles, which never are linked with personalized data. In fact, tracking tools either do not use IP addresses in the first place or abbreviate them straight away after collection.

In addition to the data listed above (see “Which data is processed when you visit our websites?”) we thereby obtain the following information:

• users’ navigation paths around our site
• users’ lengths of stay on the website or sub-sites
• last sub-site before leaving the website
• country, region, or town from where the website is accessed
• terminal (type, version, color depth, resolution, width and height of browser window)
• returning or new visitor

This information helps us with evaluating the use of our website. In case of your objection, you can, as explained in the previous section, refuse the creation of user profiles by comprehensively deactivating the use of cookies.

Social media
Our websites contain links or plug-ins to various social media. If you click on the links you are directed to the corresponding social media pages. Please note that for these pages the present privacy statement is not valid. Information on the regulations in force on these pages can be gained by consulting the privacy statements on the websites of the respective providers.

Links or plug-ins must be activated before personal data are transferred to the respective provider. By accessing a linked page, you start activating the respective provider’s data processing.

Newsletter
You can subscribe to newsletters as part of our online services. If you later decide not to receive newsletters, you can cancel your subscription at any time with effect for the future. Cancellation is possible for e-mail newsletters via the link printed in the newsletter. Alternatively, please contact us using the details in the Contact section.

Your rights as to your data
Regarding your data you can exercise the following rights:
 

• request information about your personal data (“data subject access request”).
• request that your data be corrected, complemented, disabled or deleted, conditionally upon possible previous contractual and/or statutory rights and obligations, for instance the storage period.
• withdraw your consent to our processing of your personal data at any time and with immediate effect.

For exercising your rights, it suffices to write to us by mail or send us an E-Mail.

Data security
We use suitable technical and organisational security measures to protect your personal data stored with us against manipulation, partial or complete loss and against unauthorised access by third parties. Our security measures are continuously improved in line with technological developments.

Amendments
We reserve the right to alter or complement this statement at any time, at our own discretion and in accordance with data protection regulations. Only the current version applies, as published on our website.

Contact details
In case you desire more information on your rights as to your personal data or have other questions relating to the matter, please contact the following address:

Christoph Merian Stiftung
Datenschutz
St. Alban-Vorstadt 12
4052 Basel
Schweiz
datenschutz@cms-basel.ch



Basel, 31 March 2025