I recently published an editorial with the European Privacy Association regarding the concept of “consent” under the EU’s Framework Data Protection Directive that is available here. As the editorial explains, the concept is a fundamental fixture of the EU’s data protection regime featuring in data protection law in a variety of different ways, from “unambiguous” and “explicit” consent in the Framework Directive to opt-out and opt-in consent regulating electronic marketing in the ePrivacy Directive. These various forms of consent have been transposed into national laws at least thirty times, often in ways that are not aligned or consistent, with matters further complicated by divergent notions of consent permeating other national laws.
