On 10th of January, this year, the European Commission published the Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications draft, known as ePrivacy Regulation. The draft will increase the privacy of the users: users will be asked by the browsers if they want to limit the cookies or not; the Eu Cookie Popup will not be mandatory anymore.

Publishers and advertisers did not like the draft and called it a bad movie on a campaign asking for change. Publishers and advertisers argue that the ePrivacy Regulation will put in dangerous the ad euros of the publishers, as the advertisers could face limitations on targeting specific users. The result of this is less free content.

In the draft of the ePrivacy Regulation, the EU Cookie Popup is removed in order to centralize the privacy on the web browsers:

By centralising the consent in software such as internet browsers and prompting users to choose their privacy settings and expanding the exceptions to the cookie consent rule, a significant proportion of businesses would be able to do away with cookie banners and notices, thus leading to potentially significant cost savings and simplification. However, it may become more difficult for online targeted advertisers to obtain consent if a large proportion of users opt for “reject third party cookies” settings. At the same time, centralising consent does not deprive website operators from the possibility to obtain consent by means of individual requests to end-users and thus maintain their current business model. Additional costs would ensue for some providers of browsers or similar software as these would need to ensure privacy-friendly settings.

European publishers (and advertisers) against this draft are Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT), Association of European Radios (AER), European Publishers Association (EPC), European, Association of Communications Agencies (EACA), Association of Television and Radio Sales Houses (EGTA), European Magazine Media Association (EMMA), European Newspaper Publishers Association (ENPA), Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing (FEDMA), Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe), World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).

See here why:

The current EU Cookie Popup does not protect the users. Only informs them that the website is using cookies. When users click on I consent, previously the cookies already were placed. If the ePrivacy Regulation becomes effective, Europeans will have higher privacy while browsing websites as they will be protected on the browser level, but this can put in dangerous the ad euros received by the publishers, that will have to adapt.