Cookie Policy
Our website uses cookies to provide you with the best possible online experience, to tailor content to your interests and to enable, optimise and analyse site operations.
I. What are cookies?
Cookies are tiny text files that are stored on the user’s terminal device via the browser when they visit our website. These text files contain information to provide user-friendly services and are read by web browsers. Cookies enable our website to recognise the visitor so that our web server can present a more personalised, better, faster, and more tailored website. Some of our web content may not be accessible if the user blocks cookies.
Basically, cookies are divided into the following types:
- Strictly necessary cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be disabled by the user. They are usually set up as a response to actions users have taken (e.g., setting privacy preferences, logging in, or filling forms).
- Functional cookies are used to improve and personalise the functionality of the website.
- Performance cookies allow to determine the number of visits and traffic sources in order to measure and improve the performance of the website, including identifying the most/least visited pages and assessing how visitors navigate the website.
- Marketing and Targeting cookies are used to build a profile of the users’ interests and provide them with relevant advertisements on other websites.
Cookies can also be permanent or temporary. So-called permanent cookies store a file on the end device for a certain period of time until the expiry date (or until deleted beforehand) of the cookie. This means, for example, that language settings are saved so that the user does not have to enter them again for our website.
A so-called session cookie temporarily stores a session identifier while the user is active on the website. This prevents them from having to log in again, for example, when changeing pages. Session cookies are deleted at log out or lose their validity as soon as the session has expired.
Cookies can also be used as third-party cookies. Third-party cookies come from providers other than the website operator. They can be used, for example, to collect information for advertising, custom content and web statistics.
II. Legal basis and use of cookies
To the extent that you have consented to the use of cookies, in particular to the use of performance and targeting cookies, we process the personal data on this basis.
Regarding necessary cookies, processing is based on our legitimate interest to make it easier for you to use our website and to optimise our offer and your communication with our content. For example,
- we use so-called indispensable cookies to keep the current session active.
- we use cookies for data analysis. This allows us to see, for example, how our forms are accepted, how many visitors use our pages or which are the most frequently visited web pages.
- we use third-party cookies that are used to improve your experience of our content and advertisements.
III. Third-party cookies
Some third-party providers set cookies on your computer, in particular to register visitor behaviour and personalise offers (including advertising). Depending on the platform, several cookies are set by third-party providers. You can read how the third-party provider handles cookies on the corresponding pages of the network. We have no control over the third-party cookies. We therefore recommend that you check the respective third-party websites to see which cookies are used and how they can be managed.
IV. Cookie management / opt-out
Cookies are saved on the user’s computer and transferred from there to our website. The user may have full control of the use of cookies. By changing the settings in the web browser, they can deactivate or limit the transfer of cookies. Previously saved cookies can be deleted at any time. Usually, a browser has the following setting options:
- View cookies
- Allow cookies
- Disable all or certain cookies
- Disable all cookies when closing the browser
- Block cookies
- Notify me when a cookie is to be set
- Opt-out of tracking web analytics
If cookies are blocked, the user will not be able to use some areas of our website.
V. We currently use the following cookies
For information about the cookies we use, their purpose and type of each cookie and how long they are stored, please refer to our Cookie Banner.