No it doesn't. Such cookie popups are illegal under GDPR. What credit should EU legislation take?
EU has been too slow in hitting these sites with fines though.
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection_en
> This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. Find out more on how we use cookies.
> Accept all cookies
> Accept only essential cookies
https://www.europarl.europa.eu
> Dear visitor, We use analytics cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. You have the choice to refuse or accept them.
> I refuse analytics cookies
> I accept analytics cookies
https://www.echr.coe.int has a small, non-intrusive banner about at the bottom (good), but their cookie policy does say they “generate anonymous analytics such as the number of documents downloaded.” Hopefully that’s not per user — if so that’s pretty much best-practice.
But clearly there’s a lot of variation even among EU institutions in how they approach cookie prompts.
Yes. Yes, they should. No idea why you think that some EU institutions doing something incorrectly absolves everyone else.
Implicitly, I think signal11 is making this argument:
Prior assumption: You cannot read primary legislation and understand it correctly, unless you're a lawyer specialising in that area of law.
Instead, you should copy people who've probably received competent legal advice.
Observation: A great many websites, including those of EU government bodies, use cookie consent modals.
Conclusion: Cookie consent modals must be legal.
There is in fact case law which interprets the legislation and says explicit consent is required[1] but of course it doesn’t mandate modals.
However it does note[2] that
> That decision is unaffected by whether or not the *information stored or accessed on the user’s equipment is personal data*. EU law aims to protect the user from any interference with his or her private life, in particular, from the risk that hidden identifiers and other similar devices enter those users’ terminal equipment without their knowledge.
This sets a fairly high bar for getting consent for any identifier-laden cookie. So I can understand why people choose to use modals as a risk-reduction approach, and why it has become accepted practice. If you do end up in court, it’s reasonable to expect courts to consider established practice is while formulating their judgement.
However, I do fundamentally disagree with the notion that explicit consent at the time of first visit is a good model for ordinary internet users. It was a good first effort but regulators need to do better, and strengthen ways for users to effectively pre-set their consent preferences in advance, think ‘Do Not Track’ but with teeth.
[1] https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-673/17
[2] https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...
Cookie popups such as these wouldn’t be a problem if we had a handful of websites. But they’re not helpful on the modern web with tens or even hundreds of sites visited by nontechnical or simply busy / task-focused users every day.
Please have a look at the comment chain to get context about why I brought this up. The point is that the EU’s guidance around cookie popups is part of the problem today (I know they had good intentions though).
Consent != Informed Consent. The medical community is very well aware of this, it’s time tech realised it as well.