The Parliament’s Committee on Citizens’ Freedoms and Rights, Justice and Home Affairs has said that a user should not be warned in advance before a web site installs a cookie on his or her hard drive. The Parliament has to decide how to address cookies as part of legislation on data protection in the electronic communications sector.
The European Council had favoured an approach that would introduce a general requirement for web site operators to provide prior information about the use of cookies before serving them to the user's computer. It does not discriminate between different types of cookie.
ZDNet quotes the Committee’s statement as follows:
"As regards the use of 'cookies', the Committee concurred with the Council position that users should have the right to refuse the installation of cookies, but it felt that it would suffice to guarantee users the possibility of accessing clear information on the purposes of cookies, thus rejecting the Council's view that users should receive this information in advance."
The apparent relaxation of the approach to cookies follows intensive lobbying by advertising, employment, and various industry groups which argued that the original proposal was unworkable and threatened the competitiveness of European e-commerce. However, the UK’s Information Commissioner has indicated that her office prefers the hard-line approach to cookies.