In a recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union in case C-673/17 against Planet49 GmbH, the issue of consent was analyzed on the basis of the ePrivacy Directive and the GDPR.

The case regarded a preliminary question by the German Federal Court of Justice on the validity of consent given through a pre-ticked checkbox, which the user must deselect to refuse his or her consent.

The Court analyzed the features of consent under the ePrivacy Directive (“freely given specific and informed indication of his wishes by which the data subject signifies his agreement to personal data relating to him being processed” by reference to the Data Protection Directive) and in the GDPR (“any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes”).

The Court concluded that the user is required to “give” consent and to provide an “indication”, which “points to active, rather than passive, behavior.” Therefore, an opt-out consent is not validly given.

You may want to check if your website has a passive mechanism to accept cookies (including a mechanism whereby “continuing to browse the website means acceptance of these cookies”): under the Court’s decision described above, it is possible that such a passive consent would be regarded invalid.

This conclusion would appear to contradict the previous guideline by the Italian Data Protection Authority providing that “if the user continues browsing by accessing any other section or selecting any item on the website (e.g. by clicking a picture or a link), he or she signifies his or her consent to the use of cookies.”

Further, the Court set forth that “the information that the service provider must give to a website user includes the duration of the operation of cookies and whether or not third parties may have access to those cookies.”