In its opinion 08/2024, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) commented on so-called “Consent or Pay” models, i.e. business models that give users of online services the choice of either consenting to the pro-cessing of their personal data for the purposes of behaviour-based online advertising or paying a fee for the respective service. However, according to its scope of application this opinion of the EDPB related to corresponding models of large online platforms: The EDPB Opinion 08/2024 does not contain any conclusive statements regarding “Consent or Pay” models of entities other than large platforms, even if certain assessment tendencies can be deduced.
The EDPB Opinion 08/2024 is to be supplemented by general EDPB guidelines on ‘consent or pay’ models, which will have a broader scope of application than the opinion and will cover all types of controllers and all processing purposes. In preparation for these guidelines, the EDPB held a ‘stakeholder hearing’ on 18 November 2024, to which CEDPO, the Euro-pean data protection umbrella organisation co-founded by the GDD, was also invited. With its statement, the GDD supports the opinion-forming process within CEDPO with a view to positioning it-self vis-à-vis the EDPB.
