Seven of Europe's most important media associations have made a blunt appeal to EU lawmakers to tear up proposed rules on internet consent, warning that Brussels is on the verge of handing Google and Apple effective control over whether publishers can collect data from their own readers. The joint letter was sent on 6 May 2026.
The objection, signed by bodies including the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe and the European Broadcasting Union, targets the consent provisions in the Commission's Digital Omnibus package published on 19 November 2025 – a simplification mechanism which, the publishers contend, will make life considerably more complicated for anyone trying to run a newspaper on the internet.
At issue are two specific provisions. The first, proposed Article 88a(4), would impose a six-month moratorium on asking users again for consent after they have once clicked "reject". The second, the more consequential, is the proposed Article 88b, which would standardise machine-readable consent signals broadcast by browsers – meaning that a reader's decision, mediated by Chrome or Safari, would override whatever a publisher might ask directly. Seven associations representing tens of thousands of journalists and broadcasters say the combined effect would be ruinous and have called for the deletion of both provisions.
Under the current draft, publishers would be legally required to accept machine-readable opt-out instructions sent by a user's browser or operating system. In practice, that transfers a significant portion of the European digital advertising economy's operating rules to the companies that dominate browser market share: Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Mozilla (Firefox) and Microsoft (Edge).
It is worth noting that as of May 2026, GPC — the leading browser-level opt-out standard — is natively supported only by Firefox, Brave and DuckDuckGo; Chrome and Edge do not support it natively, though third-party extensions exist. Article 88b would mandate a standardised successor signal across all browsers, which is what the publishers fear would embed those platforms as consent arbiters.
The associations, whose members range from major national newspapers to public-service broadcasters, argue this is not simplification but substitution — replacing the existing patchwork of cookie banners with a single chokepoint controlled by Silicon Valley. The revenue and consent-rate impact of this shift has not been independently modelled;
"The proposed Articles 88a and 88b would introduce severe restrictions on the ability to request consent from users, while providing a media exemption that is not sufficient to preserve the viability of the sector," writes the joint letter.
The Commission has included a partial exemption for media services within the audience-measurement provisions, allowing certain publishers to disregard browser signals where they can demonstrate a qualifying purpose. The associations describe that exemption as too narrow in scope and inconsistent with the definitions used in the European Media Freedom Act and as excluding the independent third-party measurement bodies—such as Joint Industry Committees—on which the industry relies.
Behind the constitutional argument about gatekeepers lies a more pressing concern about income. European news publishers depend heavily on consented, first-party data to sell digital advertising at meaningful rates. Programmatic campaigns that can target consented audiences command premiums substantially higher than those aimed at anonymous traffic. Shrink the consented pool, and the economics of online journalism deteriorate accordingly.
Audience-measurement practices face similar pressure. The joint letter specifically highlights that existing audience measurement systems and methodologies fail to be accommodated under the current draft, including the role of independent third parties authorised by advertisers and publishers.
The seven associations call on the Parliament and Council to delete Article 88a(4) and Article 88b in their entirety. They also call for the audience-measurement derogation to be amended in line with the European Media Freedom Act by adding "third parties authorised by advertisers and publishers" as explicit beneficiaries.
More broadly, they urge the Commission to carry out a holistic assessment of the data protection acquis to identify workable solutions for all stakeholders — rather than, as they argue the current draft does, maintaining strict consent requirements while simultaneously preventing companies from effectively requesting that consent.
The Omnibus lands at a moment of acute commercial pressure for European print and digital media. Display advertising revenues have been hollowing out for a decade; the publishers now find themselves arguing that the regulatory framework intended to protect users from privacy incursions is being redesigned in a way that may protect the very platforms — primarily Google, whose core business is advertising, and Apple, whose Safari browser is dominant on mobile — that have done most to weaken them.
The omnibus was published on 19 November 2025 and is now in the ordinary legislative procedure. A trilogue between Parliament, the Council and the Commission has not yet commenced on the data provisions.
A parallel process offers a reference point for how contested provisions fare: on the Digital Omnibus on AI, both the Parliament's IMCO-LIBE committee — which adopted its joint report on 18 March 2026 — and the Council reinstated several requirements the Commission had proposed to drop, showing that co-legislators are prepared to push back against the simplification agenda.
