Con­sent Manage­ment Regu­la­ti­on: PIMS as an alter­na­ti­ve to coo­kie banners

On Sep­tem­ber 4, 2024, the Ger­man fede­ral govern­ment adopted a new Con­sent Manage­ment Ordi­nan­ce deci­ded, more pre­cis­e­ly the “Ordi­nan­ce on Con­sent Manage­ment Ser­vices under the Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons Digi­tal Ser­vices Data Pro­tec­tion Act (Con­sent Manage­ment Ordi­nan­ce – Ein­wV)”. The Ein­wV is based on the TDDDG (Tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons Digi­tal Ser­vices Data Pro­tec­tion Act: the old TTDSG, which was amen­ded and ren­a­med to imple­ment the Digi­tal Ser­vice Act), which, among other things, regu­la­tes tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons sec­re­cy and con­ta­ins pro­vi­si­ons on the pro­tec­tion of usa­ge data, num­ber sup­pres­si­on and dis­play, end user direc­to­ries and coo­kies. The aim of the Ein­wV is to imple­ment the pro­vi­si­ons alre­a­dy pro­vi­ded for in the TDDDG to avo­id “coo­kie fati­gue”. Alter­na­ti­ve to the “coo­kie ban­ners” implement:

• § Sec­tion 25 of the TDDDG enshri­nes the con­sent requi­re­ment for the use of coo­kies (more pre­cis­e­ly: for the sto­rage of infor­ma­ti­on in the end device and access to infor­ma­ti­on stored the­re) in natio­nal Ger­man law.
• § Sec­tion 26 pro­vi­des that ser­vices can be reco­gnized that mana­ge con­sent manage­ment pro­ce­du­res, so-cal­led Per­so­nal Infor­ma­ti­on Manage­ment Ser­vices or PIMS that cen­tral­ly mana­ge cons­ents and pro­vi­de them to pro­vi­ders. The Fede­ral Govern­ment is aut­ho­ri­zed to regu­la­te the requi­re­ments for such pro­ce­du­res, the pro­ce­du­re for the cor­re­spon­ding reco­gni­ti­on and the TOMs that PIMS can take into account.

Against this back­drop, the Ein­wV sti­pu­la­tes that PIMS pro­vi­ders can be reco­gnized if they and their solu­ti­on meet cer­tain trans­pa­ren­cy requi­re­ments, allow swit­ching to ano­ther pro­vi­der and are not dis­cri­mi­na­to­ry for com­pe­ti­ti­ve rea­sons. The reco­gni­ti­on pro­ce­du­re and the TOMs are also regulated.