Should the cookie banner remain?

A nuisance for every internet user: the cookie and tracking pop-up that appears when you visit a website for the first time. (And often even afterward.) There is currently a debate in the EU over whether this should remain the case or whether there should be an automatic notification by default. Consequently, an important proposal is on the table in Brussels to put an end to this “consent fatigue” once and for all: the European Digital Omnibus.

What exactly does the EU proposal entail?

The European Commission wants to eliminate separate cookie notices for each website. Instead, the EU is proposing an automatic notification system via the browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari):

• Central browser setting: Visitors set their privacy preferences once in the browser. The browser automatically forwards this signal to every website they visit.
• Mandatory compliance: If a browser sends the “Do Not Track” signal, the website may not display a cookie banner and must respect the decision immediately.
• Exceptions for functional cookies: Under the new regulations, security cookies, functional cookies, and simple first-party statistics are exempt from the consent requirement.
  
• 6-Month Waiting Period: If a visitor opts out of tracking, a website may not ask the question again for half a year.
  

The Battle Behind the Scenes

Although the plan has received significant support from consumer organizations, the outcome is not yet certain. Tech giants like Google and various EU member states, including Germany and France, are concerned about the impact on the online advertising market. Since automatic “no” signals make it more difficult to collect marketing data, intensive lobbying is underway to weaken or completely eliminate the mandated automatic browser signals. This is particularly true for a company like Google, which stands to lose access to its (our) data.

This raises the question of whether this can actually be enforced. The EU has already taken tough action against Google on several occasions, but since various member states are also opposed to it, this could become problematic.

From a website developer’s perspective alone, it’s one less thing a user has to do manually. For marketing professionals, web designers, developers, and all the other systems behind a website, this could therefore be a positive development. Especially since we know that users are lazy—even a single manual step is often too much.

However, this could, of course, limit access to user data. For this reason, we ourselves have long advocated collecting as little personal data as possible from users. It’s useful to know where a user came from, which page or pages they viewed, and some basic information such as their country of origin. But do you need to know more than that about every visitor who comes to your website? We certainly don’t think so.

What does this mean for your website?

For now, nothing will change in the short term. The legislation has yet to be finalized, and the technical standards for browsers won’t be implemented until the coming years.

Until then, a proper cookie banner remains mandatory if you use tracking, remarketing, or external scripts (such as Meta Pixel or Google Ads) on your website. However, make sure the banner complies with current GDPR requirements: “Reject” must be just as easy as “Accept.”

What do you think about the automatic transmission of cookie settings via the browser?

Inspiration for this article:

https://tuta.com/blog/why-eu-member-states-and-google-want-to-keep-cookie-banner