Data Protection Policy

§ 1 Principles

(1) Thank you for visiting the website of Messer SE & Co. KGaA (hereinafter referred to as "Messer SE & Co. KGaA", „we“ or „us“) for the "One Europe – Excellence Awards" project. In the following, we would like to inform you about the data processing.

Personal data is all information that can be related to you personally, e.g. name, address, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers or user behavior. In addition, purely technical data that can be assigned to you is also considered personal data.

(2) The controller pursuant to Art. 4 No. 7 EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is:

(3) You can reach our Data Protection Officer at:

§ 2 Processed personal data, purposes of data processing and legal bases

We process the following personal data on the website for the project "One Europe – Excellence Awards":

(1) Collection of personal data when visiting our website

a) When you simply use the website, i.e. if you do not transmit any other information to us, we only collect the personal data that your browser transmits to our server for the purpose of providing the website and for IT security reasons. If you wish to view our website, we collect the following data, which is technically necessary for us to display our website to you, to administer it and to ensure its stability and security. The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. This legal basis permits the processing of personal data within the scope of the "legitimate interest" of the controller, unless your fundamental rights, freedoms or interests prevail. Our legitimate interest lies in easier administration, user-friendly provision of the website and the ability to detect, prevent and prosecute hacking and misuse. You can object to this data processing at any time if there are reasons relating to your particular situation that speak against data processing. All you need to do is send us an email.

Automatically collected personal data:

• IP address
• Date and time of the request
• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• The search term, if you are directed to our site via a search engine
• Files that you have downloaded from our site (e.g. PDF or Word documents)
• Content of the request (specific page)
• Access status/HTTP status code
• Amount of data transferred in each case
• Website from which the request comes
• Browser
• Operating system and its interface
• Language and version of the browser software

b) We also use cookies to put individual requests you make on our website into a common context. Cookies serve to make our website more user-friendly, secure and effective overall. The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. This legal basis permits the processing of personal data within the scope of the "legitimate interest" of the controller, unless your fundamental rights, freedoms or interests prevail. Our legitimate interest lies in the provision of special functionalities, the user-friendly design of the website, the integrity and security of the website and the analysis of the use of our website.

(2) Processing of personal data during the nomination process

As part of the "One Europe – Excellence Awards" project, employees of all European Messer companies can nominate other employees and/or teams for their outstanding achievements in various categories on our website and in a form. If you enter data in the form for the purpose of a nomination, we process the following data, in particular:

• Your first and last name;
• Country of your Messer company where you are employed;
• Category of nomination, whether you are nominating a person or a team;
• Names of the nominee(s);
• Award category;
• Information and explanation of the nominee's achievements;
• Evaluations of the information entered.

The winners and his/her data of the award campaign will be announced on an internal company website.

The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR. This legal basis permits the processing of personal data within the scope of the "legitimate interest" of the controller, unless your fundamental rights, freedoms or interests prevail. Our legitimate interest lies in the implementation of the "One Europe - Excellence Award" and the presentation of awards to outstanding employees and teams of Messer Europe. This award is intended to recognize outstanding achievements in the categories offered. The nominations are evaluated by the Messer Europe leadership team at Messer SE & Co. KGaA. You can object to this data processing at any time if there are reasons relating to your particular situation that speak against data processing. All you need to do is send us an e-mail.

§ 3 Recipients of data

(1) The IT programs used to process your data are hosted and processed by Kyndryl Deutschland GmbH and Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited (provision of the form for the nomination process). In this context, Kyndryl Deutschland GmbH and Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited only carry out data processing activities on behalf of and in accordance with the instructions of Messer SE & Co. KGaA.

(2) Otherwise, Messer SE & Co. KGaA only transfers data to third parties if this is necessary for the selection process and if there is a legal basis for this, such as a balancing of interests justifies this – in particular within the Messer companies – or to fulfill legal requirements according to which we are obliged to provide information, report or pass on data. Otherwise, data is only transferred to external service providers who process the data exclusively on our behalf.

(3) Within Messer SE & Co. KGaA, only those internal offices and departments receive the personal data that are necessary and required to process the nominations.

§ 4 General information on the retention period

(1) The server log files with the above-mentioned data are automatically deleted after 90 days. We reserve the right to store the server log files for longer if there are facts that suggest unauthorized access (such as an attempt at hacking or a so-called DDOS attack).

(2) Data that we process in connection with the "One Europe – Excellence Award" and the presentation of awards will be stored for 60 days after announcement of the winners. The winners of the award campaign will be announced on an internal company website and stored / available on an internal company website for 5 years. The data will then be deleted unless we are obliged to store it, in particular in accordance with commercial, tax and legal regulations.

§ 5 Processing of your data in a third country

(1) Data is transferred to recipients in countries outside the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA) (so-called third countries) if there is a legal basis for this, such as consent, the execution of a contract or if this is required by law. The processing of your data in a third country may also take place in connection with the involvement of service providers as part of data processing activities on behalf.

(2) If there is no adequacy decision by the EU Commission on an adequate level of data protection for the country in question, we ensure that your rights and freedoms are adequately protected and guaranteed in accordance with EU data protection regulations by means of appropriate contracts like EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Corresponding information, evidence and a copy can be obtained from Messer SE & Co. KGaA on request.

§ 6 Information pursuant to Art. 13 para. 2 lit. e) GDPR

We would also like to inform you that the provision of your personal data on the website is generally not required by law or contract. You are not obliged to provide personal data on this website, unless we indicate this in individual cases in this Policy. Nevertheless, the provision of the functions of this website requires the processing of your personal data.

The provision of data in the form is voluntary. The provision of data is not required by law or contract, nor is it necessary for the conclusion of a contract. If you do not provide us with any personal data, you will of course not suffer any adverse consequences. Nevertheless, we need the data if we do an assessment of the nominations.

§ 7 Your rights

(1) You have the following rights vis-à-vis us with regard to your personal data:

• Right to access (Art. 15 GDPR)
• Right to rectification (Art. 16 GDPR) or erasure (Art. 17 GDPR)
• Right to restriction of processing (Art. 18 GDPR)
• Right to data portability (Art. 20 GDPR)
• Right to object to the processing (Art. 21 GDPR)

(2) If you have given your consent to the processing of your data, you can revoke this at any time with effect for the future (Art. 7 para. 3 GDPR). The withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

(3) Insofar as we process your personal data on the balancing of interests pursuant to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR, you can generally object to the processing.

(4) You can exercise your rights by sending an e-mail to us.

(5) You also have the right to complain to a data protection supervisory authority about the processing of your personal data by us (Art. 77 GDPR).

§ 8 Questions and comments

We take data protection very seriously. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding data protection, please contact our Data Protection Officer by e-mail at the address given in § 1.