EDSA: par­ti­al­ly revi­sed gui­de­lines on consent.

The Euro­pean Data Pro­tec­tion Board (EDSA) has published revi­sed gui­de­lines on con­sent (Gui­de­lines 05/2020 on con­sent under Regu­la­ti­on 2016/679, ver­si­on 1.0, May 4, 2020.). This is a slight­ly revi­sed ver­si­on of the Gui­de­lines on con­sent under Regu­la­ti­on 2016/679 of the Artic­le 29 Working Par­ty (WP259.01; in addi­ti­on here). In addi­ti­on to edi­to­ri­al chan­ges, two topics are new:

• The effec­ti­ve­ness of con­sent in the case of “coo­kie walls”;
• Exam­p­le 16 regar­ding scrol­ling and consent

The EDSA sta­tes the fol­lo­wing in this regard:

• If access to a ser­vice is lin­ked to con­sent, it is not suf­fi­ci­ent that an equi­va­lent ser­vice is available on the mar­ket wit­hout con­sent. Only access to the spe­ci­fic ser­vice in que­sti­on by the respon­si­ble par­ty con­cer­ned is assessed.
• Coo­kie walls – i.e. con­sent to track­ing as a pre­re­qui­si­te for acce­s­sing an online ser­vice – lack voluntariness:
  

  In order for con­sent to be free­ly given, access to ser­vices and func­tion­a­li­ties must not be made con­di­tio­nal on the con­sent of a user to the sto­ring of infor­ma­ti­on, or gai­ning of access to infor­ma­ti­on alre­a­dy stored, in the ter­mi­nal equip­ment of a user (so-cal­led coo­kie walls).

• The fact that a user uses a web­site, e.g. scrolls, does not con­sti­tu­te an effec­ti­ve decla­ra­ti­on of consent:
  

  Based on reci­tal 32, actions such as scrol­ling or swi­ping through a web­page or simi­lar user acti­vi­ty will not under any cir­cum­stances satis­fy the requi­re­ment of a clear and affir­ma­ti­ve actionSuch actions may be dif­fi­cult to distin­gu­ish from other acti­vi­ty or inter­ac­tion by a user and the­r­e­fo­re deter­mi­ning that an unam­bi­guous con­sent has been obtai­ned will also not be pos­si­ble. Fur­ther­mo­re, in such a case, it will be dif­fi­cult to pro­vi­de a way for the user to with­draw con­sent in a man­ner that is as easy as gran­ting it.