Tips for Users

Responsible handling of personal data is a priority for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. We want our users to know when the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is collecting what data and for what purpose.

We have taken technical and organisational measures to ensure that both we as well as external service providers comply with the provisions governing data protection.

Personal data

In principle, the web services provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action are accessible to you without the need for disclosing your identity.

What is personal data?

Personal data is the term used to denote information (such as names, addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers) that allows for users’ identities to be known. This does not apply to information that is not linked to a person’s identity (such as the number of users visiting a website).

Data collection and storage

The Ministry uses a web tracking tool to obtain anonymous data about user visits to our websites. This data can be used to create pseudonimised use profiles. The cookies placed on your computer are solely used to draw conclusions about the use patterns on the Ministry’s websites and to regularly review the information services we provide to our users. No personal data is retained or passed on to third parties. It is possible to withhold or withdraw consent to the future collection and storage of data at any time.

If you use our contact form or write to us per email, your data will be stored so that we can correspond with you.

If we receive a message from you via the contact form or via email, we assume that we have the right to respond via email. Otherwise, you must explicitly ask us to use another channel of communication.

All content submitted via the contact forms of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is transmitted via an encrypted https link.

Communication via email is vulnerable to security risks. It is possible, for instance, that emails sent to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action may be stopped and viewed by skilled internet users.

Whenever the contact form is being used, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action receives not only the information inserted in the data fields, but also the sender’s IP address. In principle, the same is true whenever a normal email is sent. Before the contact form is sent, you will be asked to agree to having your IP address transmitted and stored. The IP address will only be used for the purpose of public prosecution under criminal law and to combat threats in line with the applicable legislation.

Enquiries from the general public, both in paper and electronic form, are stored in accordance with the statutory time limits for retaining written records established by the Registry Directive (Registraturrichtlinie), which complements the Joint Rules of Procedure of the Federal Ministries (Gemeinsame Geschäftsordnung der Bundesministerien, GGO).

If you order information material or brochures, subscribe to newsletters, or register for a forum or database operated by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, we will ask for your name and other personal data. You are free to decide whether or not to provide this information. By entering your data, you consent to it being used for the purpose/s specified. We store this data on secure servers in Germany. Only a very limited number of specially authorised individuals who are involved with the technical, commercial or editorial management of the servers have access to this data.

We only store your data for as long as we need it for the specified use. For example, your data will be deleted if you cancel a subscription to a newsletter or once we have sent you the requested information.

In addition to this, we store data for statistical and security purposes whenever our servers are accessed. More specifically, the IP address submitted by the internet service providers, the data and time when our server was accessed, and the specific target addresses are stored for the duration of seven days. This data is used for the sole purpose of improving the web services provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and is not traced back to individual users. Notwithstanding this, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action reserves the right to make use of certain data sets to arrive at personal data in cases of serious violations of our terms of use and in cases of unauthorised access or attempted unauthorised access to our servers.

Disclosure of data to third parties

Data collected in connection with access to the web services provided by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is only transmitted to third parties in cases where the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is obliged by law or by court order or where this is necessary for attacks on the internet infrastructure of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action to be prosecuted. Data will not be passed on for any other non-commercial or for commercial purposes.

In cases where personal data has been submitted for the purpose of ordering information material or brochures, this data will only be used within the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and by the companies responsible for dispatching the brochures. No data will be passed on to third parties without your explicit consent.

Data protection statement for social media

The Ministry takes the ongoing debate about data protection in social networks very seriously. It is not yet clear whether and to what extent all the networks’ services are in compliance with European data protection rules.

We therefore explicitly draw your attention to the fact that the services used by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action store user data (e.g. personal information, IP address etc.) in line with their own guidelines on data usage and use it for commercial purposes.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action has no influence on the collection and use of the data by social networks. We are unable to ascertain the extent, the location and the duration of the data capture, the extent to which the networks meet obligations to delete data, what evaluations and links pertaining to the data are made, and to whom the data is forwarded.

Modification of the data protection statement

As our website (and the underlying technology) develop further, it may become necessary for us to change the terms of this data protection statement. We therefore recommend that you re-read this data protection statement from time to time.

Name and address of the person responsible for data processing

The person responsible within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation, of other data protection rules applicable in the EU Member States and of other related provisions is:

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action
Scharnhorststr. 34-37
10115 Berlin
Postal address: 11019 Berlin
Email: info@bmwk.bund.de
Website: www.bmwi.de
Phone: +49 (0) 30-18 615-0

Contact

Data protection officer for the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action
Scharnhorststr. 34-37
11019 Berlin
Email: datenschutzbeauftragte@bmwk.bund.de

The Ministry takes the ongoing debate about data protection in social networks very seriously. It is not yet clear whether and to what extent all the networks’ services are in compliance with European data protection rules. As soon as there are any new legal aspects governing the operation of our fan page, we will respond to them without delay. Until that time, you should check carefully what personal data you are providing to the social networks by using our fan page.

We draw your attention to the fact that Facebook, Google and YouTube store their users’ data (e.g. personal information, IP address, etc.) in line with their own guidelines on data usage and use it for commercial purposes. You can find out more about the processing of data by the social networks via the following links: Facebook, Twitter, Google.

The Ministry has no influence on the collection and use of the data by the social networks. We are unable to ascertain the extent, the location and the duration of the data capture, the extent to which the networks meet obligations to delete data, what evaluations and links pertaining to the data are made, and to whom the data are forwarded.

Small text files known as “cookies” are saved by your browser when you use the Ministry’s internet service. It remains necessary to save cookies even if you withhold or withdraw consent to the collection and storage of data by the web tracking tool used by the website.

In order to accept cookies, please proceed as follows:

• Mozilla Firefox: Tools/Options/Privacy/in “Remember history” select the option “Use custom settings for history” in the dropdown menu and accept cookies.
• Internet Explorer: Tools/Internet options/Security/ under Options move the slide bar down to permit all cookies;
• Opera: Tools/Settings/Preferences/Advanced/accept cookies;
• Google Chrome: Settings/Show advanced settings/Content settings.

The legal bases published in this internet service have been carefully compiled, but no claim is made that they are current, correct or complete; no such guarantee is given.

Laws and ordinances are only applicable in their current version, as published in the relevant official journal (particularly the Federal Law Gazette and the Federal Gazette).

To help you find specific texts of legislation on the website of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, here is a collection of laws and ordinances (in German) which you can sort alphabetically or by policy field. You can also search by keyword.

You can also search for more legislation on the juris GmbH website (in German).

The website has been optimised for viewing in modern browsers with enabled JavaScript (e.g. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome). You can use the website on desktop equipment and a host of mobile devices.

You can download the latest browsers from the following sites:

• Internet Explorer
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Chrome

You can change the font size in your browser to suit your viewing preferences.

• Mozilla Firefox: Click on “View”, then “Zoom” and make the font size larger or smaller in small steps.
• Internet Explorer: Click on “View”, then “Text size” and select the desired size from five possibilities.
• Safari: Click on “Preferences”, then “Advanced” to “Accessibility”. By ticking the box, you can select the default, minimum font size. You can zoom in and out on specific pages using the combination [Cmd] & [-]/[+].
• Google Chrome: Click on “Zoom” to achieve the required font size.

These pages are designed to meet the guidelines of the German Verordnung zur Schaffung barrierefreier Informationstechnik nach dem Behindertengleichstellungsgesetz (Ordinance on the Creation of Barrier-Free Information Technology) and are continually updated to meet changing requirements. We always try to keep the Ministry’s website in compliance with the Ordinance.

Should you encounter barriers despite this, please send an email to: internetredaktion@bmwk.bund.de.

Unless designated otherwise, the texts on this page are covered by a Creative Commons Namensnennung-Keine Bearbeitung 3.0 Deutschland Licence.

You can find hints about the use of the RSS news feeds here.

You can use the search function on the upper right side of each page to conduct quick and easy searches of our website. As you type in your search term, suggestions of frequently accessed content that potentially matches your search criteria will appear automatically. Clicking on one of these suggestions will immediately take you to the list of results for that term. If the list does not contain the term you are searching for, enter your search term/s and click on the magnifying glass to the right of the input field or use the “enter” button to obtain a list of all the results generated by your search.

Advanced search

Your search results will then be listed as a table in accordance with their relevance to your search criteria. The results can also be sorted chronologically by clicking on “Date sorted ascending” or “Date sorted descending”. You can also limit the number of results generated by your search by selecting the topics, document types and time period to be covered by your search. For example, you can search for a “press release” that was published under the topic “external economic policy” during the past month.

As an additional service, the advanced search function also offers the option of including the Economic Affairs Ministry’s satellite websites in your search request. To do this, tick the “include in search” box.

You can also search within selected types of publication, e.g. press releases or publications, in the Press section or under “Service/Publication”.

Hints for searches

Several search terms will be linked by “or”.

If you wish to search for a phrase, place it in inverted commas.

You need a PDF reader to view PDF files. These programmes enable you to read and print PDF files. Information about PDF Readers which can be downloaded free of charge can be found here.

Viewing and downloading PDF documents

If a PDF Reader is installed, you can view PDF documents directly in your browser by clicking on the file.

If your browser does not support the software or if you want to save the document directly to your hard disk, right-click on the document (for Windows) or hold down the button longer (for Macs) and select "Target/Save Link As..." from the menu. Choose where you wish to store the file on your computer.

The shortcut Control (Ctrl) + P opens the browser’s print menu, which offers various print settings. Alternatively, the browser’s print menu can be accessed by clicking “Settings” and “Print”.