rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/petition/kill-the-cookie-banner?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-petition-area-kill-the-cookie-banner' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> Volt Europa https://actionnetwork.org/groups/volt-europa https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/petitions/photos/000/776/720/normal/WE_USE_COOKIES_(2).png Europe must not let powerful lobbies sabotage the one reform that finally hands data power back to citizens Every day you click. Accept. Reject. Manage preferences. There is barely a website left without a cookie banner, and they are not neutral. A 2020 study found that only 11.8% of them met even the minimum requirements of the law. Around nine in ten use "dark patterns" built to push you toward "Accept." Hide the "reject" option one click deeper, and consent jumps by 22 percentage points. Worn down, we click "Accept All" just to reach the page we want, handing over data we never meant to. Consent that is exhausted is not consent at all. But there is a fix, and it is already written into a draft bill on the European Level: set your privacy preferences once, in your browser or on your device, and every website must read that signal and obey. (Art. 88b Data Omnibus) No banner. No tricks. A companion rule (Article 88a) guarantees a genuine one-click "reject" and stops sites from nagging you again for six months. Instead of you fighting a thousand banners every day, the websites have to listen to you for once and for good. Sounds too good to be true? Google, Meta, and the advertising industry, whose business model relies on tracking you across the internet, definitely think so. They’ve been trying to convince governments that giving users so much control over their privacy will break the internet. They are demanding that Articles 88a & 88b be deleted outright. And, right now, they are winning: Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, and Latvia have already quietly lined up behind deletion and secured a majority among the 27 Member States to not introduce such consent managers, cementing the status quo. But it’s not too late to push back: Join our public call to the Members of the European Parliament EPs and your national government: keep Article 88a, keep Article 88b, and finally give European citizens the online experience we all long for: Private, seamless, and unbureaucratic. It is time to rise, unite, and kill the cookie banner! Sign and share this petition. https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/kill-the-cookie-banner