Registration
Entry & Stay in Switzerland
A minimum of 6 months (2 trimesters) of intensive courses are required to obtain a student visa. The rules applicable for entry into Switzerland are different for nationals of the EU and EFTA countries and for nationals of other countries. The competent authority is the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM). (source: Information on entering and staying in Switzerland)
If you have a valid and recognized identity document, you do not need a visa to enter Switzerland. If your stay is longer than 90 days, you need a residence permit from the cantonal migration authority responsible for your place of residence in Switzerland. The application for a residence permit together with the necessary documents must be submitted directly to the competent cantonal migration authority in Switzerland. Within 14 days after arrival in Switzerland, EU-25/EFTA citizens must register with their municipality of residence and apply for a residence permit.
The conditions for entering Switzerland vary according to your nationality, the reason for your stay (tourism, visit, work, study, family reunion, etc.) and the duration of your stay (short or long). If you need a visa, the migration authorities will formally carry out two procedures that are closely linked, as they are governed by overlapping conditions: The visa granting, which is conducted by the Swiss representation abroad (embassy or consulate). It is your responsibility to fill out the application form for a national visa D - for stays of more than 90 days. You can obtain the required form from the Swiss representation abroad or download it.
Additional visa application forms in local languages can be found on the websites of the Swiss representation abroad. Please submit the completed form to the Swiss representation abroad. Apply early, because depending on the season, the application takes six to eight weeks, but sometimes even longer. The State Secretariat for Migration, SEM, has a list of documents that must be submitted to the embassies or consulates:
This procedure takes time and is subject to deadlines. Therefore, it is important to organise everything in advance. The student must then present himself/herself personally to the Swiss representation abroad during the visa application procedure. The procedure for granting a residence permit for educational purposes is managed by the migration authorities known as the "foreigners police" (in the canton of Vaud, the SPOP and for the Confederation, the SEM). Please fill in the application form.
The exercise of an incidental activity is reserved for students of universities, specialized or pedagogical schools. A student may start working in parallel to his or her studies no earlier than six months after the start of the course. The school must confirm that this activity will not delay the planned program. The activity can be full-time during school holiday, but otherwise during the term may not exceed 15 hours a week . It must be announced in advance to the Population Service and authorized by the Employment Service of the competent canton.
General terms and conditions
The present general conditions apply to any offer of the Institut Richelieu Sàrl whose head office is located at Rue Centrale 10 in 1003 Lausanne.
The registration is taken into account and registered upon receipt of the full registration fee.
For organizational reasons, we reserve the right to postpone courses or group classes, to move the location of the course, or to adapt the schedule. In case of absence of the teacher, the Richelieu Institute will replace him/her.
In order to ensure smooth progress in our courses, the Richelieu Institute sets a minimum and a maximum number of participants for each course. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. As a general rule, if the number of participants is insufficient, the course may be cancelled before the scheduled date and the client will be exempted from payment. In addition, the course can be cancelled at any time due to force majeure. In this case, the candidates will be notified in writing. The Richelieu Institute will not be responsible for any additional costs incurred by the participants due to the cancellation.
The Richelieu Institute reserves the right to exclude one or more participants for several reasons. The entirety of the payment remains due in cases of unacceptable behavior (insults, threats, aggressive behavior, voluntary damage of material, etc.).
Group courses Any cancellation of registration involves administrative formalities. You must send us a letter (paper or e-mail) stating that you wish to cancel your registration. The date of the postmark (respectively the date of receipt of the e-mail) will be considered as the official cancellation date. Exemption or reimbursement of courses is done according to the following procedure: - Before the start of the course: partial refund (minus CHF 400). - After the start of the course: refund of subsequent courses. Private courses (private and semi-private lessons) Up to 48 hours before the course: no charge. Up to 24 hours before the course: 50% refund. Less than 24 hours before the training: no refund.
Missed sessions cannot be made up and are not refunded. Holidays, as well as personal absences are not reimbursed
All intellectual property rights resulting from the execution of the contract (performance of the service) belong to the Richelieu Institute. The customer commits himself or herself to accept the demands of third parties concerning a violation of intellectual property rights, and pay the expenses resulting from such a violation, including possible damages. The Richelieu Institute undertakes to inform the customer immediately of any claim for compensation and to provide him or her with all the documents necessary for his defense, subject to the obligation to respect secrecy. Any reproduction or depiction, in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, of the pages published in the Richelieu Institute's courses, made without the authorization of its authors for each of their parts, is illicit and constitutes an infringement. Only reproductions strictly reserved for the private use of the copyist, and short quotations justified by the technical or informative nature of the content of the courses are authorized.
The parties to the contract shall ensure the confidentiality of all information that is not public or freely accessible. The obligation to maintain confidentiality begins before the contract is concluded and continues after the contract is terminated. The observance of the legal duty to inform remains. A written agreement from the Richelieu Institute is required if the customer wishes to use their contractual relationship for advertising or to mention it in a publication.
If more than 80% of the course has been completed, a course completion confirmation will be issued. In case of successful completion of the exam, a certificate will replace the course completion confirmation.
For all courses and events organized by the Richelieu Institute, we decline all responsibility for any damage you may suffer. You must therefore take out appropriate civil liability insurance yourself. The use of the Richelieu Institute's facilities is at your own risk. The Richelieu Institute cannot be held responsible for theft or loss.
By registering, you agree to the use of your personal data (private contact information, statistics of the courses taken, compliance with payment terms, etc.) by the Richelieu Institute. This personal data could be used for different purposes (advertisements, refusal of registration due to non compliance with payment terms, etc.). You can unsubscribe from our newsletter at any time, verbally or in writing.
It is forbidden to make video or audio recordings in any of our premises, without the explicit consent of the Richelieu Institute and, if applicable, of the course participants.
Payment from abroad: charges to be paid by the issuer. Possibility to pay by card (summup) with a surcharge.
The Richelieu Institute reserves the right to make changes to the programs, prices and general conditions.
All legal relations with the Richelieu Institute are subject to Swiss law. The courts of the Canton of Vaud are exclusively competent to judge any dispute resulting from the present general conditions. In case of dispute, the place of jurisdiction is Lausanne, Switzerland. Lausanne on September 1st, 2021
Data protection
Based on the European Data Protection Regulation (hereafter: “RGPD“), the Richelieu Institute informs you about the type of data that the school processes, how it is processed and for what purpose.
Although the RGPD is a European Union regulation, it is directly applicable in Switzerland. For this reason, this document is based on the RGPD as a whole.
It is important to us that you are informed in detail about the processing of your data. Therefore, we are informing you how and why your personal data is collected, processed and used.
Data protection law regulates the processing of personal data. Personal data is data that can be associated with a specific natural person, i.e. a human being. This includes the following information:
In Switzerland, the data of a legal entity is also considered as personal data (e.g. information related to a contract with a company). Some personal data is subject to special protection by the legislator. This includes "particularly sensitive personal data" (also called "special categories of personal data"). This includes, for example, data indicating race or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or ideological beliefs or trade union membership, as well as genetic data, biometric data for unambiguous identification, data relating to health and data relating to sex life or sexual orientation, and finally data relating to criminal convictions and offences and, where applicable, data relating to social welfare measures. It is possible to use our website without us collecting personal data. In this case, "cookies" (as they are called) are collected (see section "Cookies"). We collect your personal data (name, first name, address, postal number, place, e-mail address, telephone number, gender, date of birth, level of knowledge in French as a foreign language as well as any billing address) when you communicate with us, when you visit our website or via an application (MS Teams, MS Forms or other). The term "Processing" of data means any use of your personal data. This includes for example the following actions:
This data protection declaration applies to the processing of your personal data by us in all our areas of activity. It applies to the processing of personal data already collected as well as to the processing of future personal data. Our processing of data may concern in particular the following persons (referred to as "data subjects"):
Depending on the occasion and the purpose, we process different personal data. Among other things, we process personal data, and possibly particularly sensitive data, in the following situations for the following purposes:
We process personal data when you contact us or when we contact you, e.g. if you write to us using the contact form or if you call us, for example to participate in a trial lesson. Generally, information such as name and contact details, the time of the notifications in question and their contents, which may also include personal data of third parties, is sufficient for us. We use this data in order to be able to inform you or send you information, to process your request and to communicate with you, as well as for quality assurance and training. We forward the notifications to the responsible company departments.
We also process personal data if you use our services. We process your personal data, for example, in the context of processing training contracts and invoicing. We also process personal data in connection with your creditworthiness and payment behavior. For example, we use credit information to decide whether to offer you monthly payments.
We process personal data in relation to the offer and functionality. This includes technical data, such as information about the time of access to our website, the duration of the visit, the pages displayed and information about the device used (e.g. tablet, PC or smartphone; "terminal"). We use this data for the provision of the website, for IT security reasons and to improve the user-friendliness of the website.
We process personal data for sending information and advertising messages. If you sign up for a newsletter or SMS notification, for example, we process your contact data and, in the case of emails, also information about your use of the notification (e.g. whether you have opened an email and downloaded the images inserted in it), in order to get to know you better, to better adjust our offers to you and to be able to improve them generally. You can block the processing of your usage data in your email program, if you do not agree with this.
Promotional games and similar events: From time to time we organize contests, promotional games and similar events, such as workshops. We process your contact details and information about your participation for the purpose of running the competitions and promotional games, if necessary for communication with you in this regard and for advertising purposes.
If you enter our premises, we may make video recordings in appropriately marked areas for security and evidential purposes. In addition, it is possible to use a Wi-Fi connection. In this case, we collect device-specific data during registration and invite you to register with your name and e-mail address or mobile number.
When we organize customer events (e.g. promotional events and events such as graduation ceremonies), we also process personal data. This includes the name and postal address or email address of the participants or interested parties and, if applicable, other data, e.g. your date of birth. We process this information for the organization of customer events, but also to get in direct contact with you and to get to know you better.
We cooperate with various companies and business partners. We also process personal data through the contact persons in these companies (name, function, title and communication, ...).
We process personal data for our own administration. We may process personal data in the context of accounting or IT administration. We also process personal data for accounting and archiving purposes and, in general, for the control and improvement of internal processes.
We also process personal data if you apply for a job with us. For this purpose, we generally require the usual information and documents and the information and documents mentioned in a recruitment notice.
We process personal data to comply with legal requirements.
We process personal data in different constellations to safeguard our rights or to defend against claims. We may process your personal data and the personal data of third parties or transfer personal data to third parties in Switzerland and abroad, insofar as this is necessary and permitted.
Our employees have access to your personal data insofar as this is necessary for the purposes described and for the activities of the employees concerned. They act in accordance with our instructions and are obliged to maintain confidentiality and discretion in handling your personal data. Through the selection of data processors and appropriate contractual agreements, we ensure that data protection is guaranteed throughout the processing of your personal data, even by third parties. Our data processors are obliged to process personal data exclusively on our behalf and according to our instructions.
The recipients of your personal data may also be located abroad - including outside the EU or EFTA. These countries may not have laws that protect your personal data in the same way as in Switzerland, the EU or EFTA. If we have to transfer your personal data to such a country, we are obliged to ensure the protection of your personal data in an appropriate manner (Art. 46s. GDPR). A good way to do this is to conclude data transfer contracts with recipients of your personal data in third countries that ensure the necessary data protection. This includes contracts that have been authorized, concluded or accepted by the European Commission and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner, so-called standard contractual clauses (Art. 46, No. 2 GDPR).
We take appropriate technical (encryption, logging, access limitation, data backup, ...) and organizational (instructions to our employees, confidentiality agreements, audits, ...) security measures in order to maintain the security of your personal data, to protect it against unjustified or illegal processing and to counter the danger of loss, unintentional modification, inadvertent disclosure or unauthorized access. Generally, however, security risks cannot be completely excluded. Some residual risks are mostly unavoidable.
We store your personal data in a personalized form for as long as it is necessary for the concrete purpose for which we have collected it. We also store your personal data when we have a legitimate interest in doing so. This may be the case, for example, if we need personal data to assert or defend ourselves against claims, for archiving purposes and to ensure IT security. We also store your personal data as long as it is subject to a legal retention obligation. For some data, the retention period is ten years. Short retention periods are observed for other data (video surveillance recordings or recordings of certain internet transactions {log data}). In some cases, we also ask for your consent if we want to store your personal data for a longer period of time (e.g. for applications that we would like to keep pending). After the expiration of the time limits, we delete or anonymize your personal data.
You can object to data processing at any time and generally freely revoke your consent to data processing. A right of objection exists in particular against data processing in connection with direct mail (against advertising emails). In addition, you have the following rights:
Right to information:
You have the right to be informed in a transparent, clear, comprehensible and comprehensive manner about how we process your personal data and about the rights you have in connection with the processing of your personal data. With this data protection declaration, we comply with this obligation. Please contact us for further information.
Right of access:
You have the right to request access to your personal data stored with us at any time when we are processing it. This gives you the opportunity to check which of your personal data we process and whether we use it in accordance with the applicable data protection regulations.
Right of correction:
You have the right to have incorrect or incomplete personal data corrected or completed and to be informed of the correction. In this case, we will inform the recipients of the affected data about the adjustments made, insofar as this is not impossible or accompanied by disproportionate effort.
Right to deletion:
You have the right to have your personal data deleted. You can request the deletion of your personal data when:
Right to restrict of processing:
Under certain conditions, you have the right to request that the processing of your personal data be restricted. This may mean, for example, that the processing of personal data is (temporarily) not continued or that published personal data is (temporarily) deleted from a website. In this case, we inform the recipients of the data concerned about the adjustments made, insofar as this is not impossible or accompanied by a disproportionate effort.
Right to data transmission:
You have the right to receive from us, free of charge and in a readable format, the personal data you have provided to us, provided that:
Right of recourse:
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a competent supervisory authority regarding the way in which your personal data is processed.
Right of revocation:
In general, you have the right to revoke a granted consent at any time. Processing activities based on your consent in the past, however, do not become unlawful as a result of your revocation.
Google/Google Analytics
The Richelieu Institute uses Google Analytics to analyze the use of our website and to make statistics in order to optimize our advertising. Google Analytics uses what is called "Cookies". This is textual data which is saved on your computer and which allows an analysis of your use of our website. The information collected by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transferred to a Google server and stored there. This server may be located outside of Switzerland. Google will use this information to analyse your use of our website, to compile reports on your activities on our website and to provide further services related to your use of the website and the internet. If applicable and legally required, Google will also pass on this information to a third party, if this third party processes this data on behalf of Google. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You can prevent the installation of cookies by changing settings in your browser. In this case, some functions of our website may not be fully usable. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
Use of Facebook
If you use a website and Facebook at the same time, Facebook records which website you visit. This information is saved in your Facebook user account. Facebook will receive the information that you have visited the site in question, even if you only looked at the home page without clicking on a choice. If you do not want this to happen, you should log out of your Facebook account before opening a new website. You can find more tips about data protection on Facebook as well as settings for your protection in Facebook under "privacy".
Use of Instagram
Via our website, you can access Instagram. Instagram receives the information that you arrive on the Instagram website via our website - and this information will be filed and stored (as in Facebook) in your Instagram account. If you don't want this to happen, you should log out of your Instagram account before opening a new website. You can find further tips about data protection on Instagram as well as settings for your protection on Instagram in the document "Instagram user policy".
Use of YouTube
If you switch to YouTube from our website, the integrated YouTube video player establishes a connection with YouTube so that the video or audio file is output. At the same time, data will be transmitted to YouTube under its responsibility. We are not responsible for the processing of this data by YouTube. Further information on the scope and purpose of the data collected, the processing and use of the data by YouTube, your rights and the data protection options available to you can be found in the YouTube data protection guidelines.
Links to other websites
On our website there are also links to third party websites. As soon as you click on these links, you leave our area of influence. The Richelieu Institute is not responsible for the content of third party websites which are accessible via a link on our website.
Data security
The Richelieu Institute strives to maintain the security of your data and to establish secure data networks, which correspond to the current technical standards. For this purpose, we have taken the necessary and reasonable technical and organizational preventive measures in order to protect your data conscientiously from loss, destruction, falsification, manipulation or unauthorized access.
This data protection declaration may be adapted over time, in particular if we change our data processing or if new legal provisions become applicable. In the event of significant changes, we will actively inform the persons whose details are stored with us of these changes, insofar as this is possible without disproportionate effort. As a rule, the data protection declaration in the version valid at the start of the processing in question shall apply to data processing.
Any questions ?
We are at your disposal to answer them and to accompany you during your registration process.