A trade body representing advertisers has called on European countries not to implement new EU cookie laws in ways that would “disrupt” use of the internet.
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which claims to represent the companies behind 90% of the world’ advertising spending, has warned that new EU laws on websites’ use of cookies could obstruct people’s use of the internet and damage the prospects of advertisers and the web publishers who rely on their backing.
The European Parliament passed a Telecoms Package of reforms this week in what was the wide-ranging proposal’s final legal hurdle. The reforms will have to become law in all 27 EU member states.
They include an insistence that the storage of cookie files on a user’s computer “is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his or her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information … about the purposes of the processing”.
This has raised the possibility that people visiting websites for the first time will have to manually approve every cookie stored on their machine. One web page can contain multiple cookies, as can adverts on those web pages.
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