In its judgment of 1 October 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decided on cookie consent requirements under the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679/EU (GDPR) and the Cookie Directive 2002/58/EC (Cookie Directive) (Case C-673/17, Planet49 GmbH v. Bundesverband der Verbraucherzentralen und Verbraucherverbände – Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. (the Judgment)).
The ECJ set clear requirements on what cookie consent must look like. However, the requirements for when websites must ask for cookie consent may vary from one EU member state to another as some member states, such as Germany, have not implemented the Cookie Directive and the Judgment, therefore, does not apply directly.
As a rule of thumb, it can be said that, at minimum, websites must ask for cookie consent for all cookies other than cookies that are technically required to operate the website or to provide the website service to the user. In other words, tracking, marketing and analytics cookies may only be used with explicit, clear, informed (Art. 13 GDPR) and prior consent.
Background
The case involved a promotional lottery, which was presented with two checkboxes:
- A checkbox obtaining consent for marketing emails that was not pre-ticked, but was mandatory to tick in order to participate in the lottery (Marketing Checkbox)
- A pre-ticked checkbox obtaining consent to cookies, which users could opt out of at any time (Cookie Checkbox)