Advocate General: No Valid Cookie Consent When Checkbox Is Pre-ticked
On 21 of March Maciej Szpunar, Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, delivered his Opinion in the case of Planet24 GmbH against Bundesverband Verbraucherzentralen und Vebraucherverbände – Verbaucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V. (Federal Association of Consumer Organisations). In the Opinion, Szpunar explains how to obtain valid consent for the use of cookies.
In the case in question, Planet24 GmbH has organised a lottery campaign on the internet. When registering to participate in the action lottery, two checkboxes appeared. The first checkbox, which did not contain a pre-selected tick, concerned permission for sponsors and cooperation partners to contact the participant in order to inform him of their offers. The second checkbox, which was already ticked off, concerned the consent to the setting of cookies, which evaluate the user’s surfing and usage behaviour.
The Federal Association held that the clauses used infringed german law, in particular Article 307 of the BGB, Article 7(2), point 2, of the UWG and Article 12 et seq. of the TMG and filed a lawsuit in 2014 after an unsuccessful warning.
In the course of the instances, the case ended up at the German Federal Supreme Court in 2017. The German Federal Court considers that the success of the case depends on the interpretation of Articles 5(3) and 2(f) of Directive 2002/58, read in conjunction with Article 2(h) of Directive 95/46, and of Article 6(1)(a) of Regulation 2016/679. For that reason, it asked the European Court of Justice the following questions for a preliminary ruling:
(1) Does consent given on the basis of a pre-ticked box meet the requirements for valid consent under the ePrivacy Directive, the EU Data Protection Directive and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR)?
(2) What information does the service provider have to provide to the user and does this include the duration of the use of cookies and whether third parties have access to the cookies?
According to the Advocate General, there is no valid consent if the checkbox is already ticked. In such case, the user must remove the tick, i.e. become active if he/she does not agree to the use of cookies. However, this would contradict the requirement of an active act of consent by the user. It is necessary for the user to explicitly consent to the use of cookies. Therefore, it is also not sufficient if one checkbox is used to deal with both the use of cookies and participation in the action lottery. Consent must be given separately. Otherwise the user is not in the position to freely give a separate consent.
In addition, Szpunar explains that the user must be provided with clear and comprehensive information that enables the user to easily assess the consequences of his consent. This requires that the information provided is unambiguous and cannot be interpreted. For this purpose, the information must contain details such as the duration of the operation of cookies, as well as whether third parties have access to the cookies.
