Last modified: 29 September 2022

These Terms and Conditions of use (hereinafter the “Terms”) shall govern the use of this Forum (hereinafter the "Forum"). By using the Forum, you accept these Terms in full.

General Remarks

The Discussion Forum (Forum) of the Community of Practice (CoP) of the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy is a moderated space where users can exchange ideas, information, and suggestions and engage in open discussions on various issues related to citizen engagement, citizen participation and deliberative democracy.

Content

The Forum allows users to post, link, share, and make available information about the topics of interest of the Community of Practice (hereinafter the "Content").

The Content published on the Forum may be protected by intellectual property rights. The users warrant that they own or that they have obtained all the necessary authorisations in order to be entitled to use and license the Content posted by them on the Forum, and that they do not violate, misappropriate or infringe any law or any third parties' rights, including, without limitation, privacy rights, copyrights, trademarks and/or other intellectual property rights.

Users warrant that they have obtained all the appropriate authorisations, permissions or consents from the holders of copyright, related rights, image rights and other intellectual property rights pertaining to the Content, as well as written authorisations of persons depicted in photographs, images or playing in videos or moving images.

Users may exchange information and/or opinions, initiate, participate to discussions, and/or publish discussion topics. Such Content reflects ideas and opinions of the users and do not reflect the official position of the European Commission (the Commission).

Users may distribute or reproduce the Content as long as the source is credited and the Content is not distorted.

By posting Content to the Forum the users retain all their ownership rights in their Content, but they grant the following licences:

1. to the Commission a licence upon this Content on a royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable and sub-licensable basis. The licence of the Content covers all territories worldwide and is valid for the whole duration of intellectual property rights. The Commission, has the right to host, use, store, reproduce, modify, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Content, sub-licence, and create derivative works at their own discretion, but in accordance with the present Terms.
2. to the other users of the Forum, a licence upon this Content on a royalty-free, non-exclusive and irrevocable basis. The licence of the Content covers all territories worldwide and is valid for the whole duration of intellectual property rights. The other users of the Forum have the right to access your Content throughout the Forum, and to use, reproduce and download the Content, to the extent permitted by the functionalities of the Forum.

General principles

-    Do not cross post:

Please refrain from posting the same content in several sub-forums (or topics). There is normally only one sub-forum that is the most adequate for your post. Messages posted in the wrong sub-forum will be removed and placed in the correct one by the Moderators.

-    Do not post inappropriate Content:

The following categories of Content are deemed to constitute inappropriate Content. Posting such Content may result in account suspension (after 2 warnings issued by the Moderators), banning, and/or removal of the offending posts:

• Content of a defamatory, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane or threatening nature. This includes any Content ethnically, racially, religiously or sexually offensive, insulting or demeaning;
• Illegal Content (including, without limitation, privacy rights, copyrights, trademarks and/or other intellectual property rights);
• Content that constitutes explicit advertising of products or services without our prior consent;
• Content that contains viruses, worms, time bombs, Trojan horses, or other harmful or disruptive components;
• Content that solely post/endorse/promote your own personal gain;

-    Do not create multiple accounts:

Users may only have one active account. If for any reason, you would like to create a new account, please seek for our prior approval. Users who have multiple accounts without a prior approval of an administrator, may be banned.

-    Do not PM other Participants:

Asking questions via private messages (PM) is strongly discouraged. It is unlikely that other users will respond to these requests and it defeats the secondary intent of the forums to be a resource for people.

Accounts

The forum user groups are the following:

• Administrator: 
• Content Editor: 
• Participants (authenticated user): 
• Visitor (unauthenticated user):

Each user role is granted specific role permissions, thus there are certain actions that can be performed by each role. In general, in terms of data, the user groups will have different capabilities and roles in terms of data provided and managed.

Termination

We may terminate or suspend your account immediately, without prior notice, for any reason whatsoever, including without limitation if you breach the Terms. In such a case any liability on the part of the Commission is excluded.

Upon termination, your right to use the Forum will immediately cease. If you wish to terminate your account, you may simply discontinue using the Forum and delete your account.

Applicable law and jurisdiction

The exercise of the rights granted hereunder shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the law of the European Union, complemented where necessary by the substantive laws of Belgium. The General Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg shall have exclusive jurisdiction for any dispute related to or deriving from the use of the Forum. 

Liabilities and warranties

The Content published in the Forum by the users is the sole responsibility of the user that has submitted it. In particular the Commission makes no representations or warranties whatsoever express or implied as to the quality, appropriateness, accuracy or completeness of the Content. The Commission shall not be responsible or liable for the use of the Content by other users or any third party and reserves the right to remove Content that is inappropriate or breach the present Terms. Users undertake to indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Commission from and against claims, demands or actions against the Commission, as well as any costs or expenses, including legal costs relating to legal judgements and proceedings concerning liabilities arising from the published Content on the Forum. 

Contact Us

If you have any questions about these Terms, please contact us by using the following contact address:
EU-CITIZEN-ENGAGEMENT@ec.europa.eu