The government disagrees with the OPTA of opinion about the interpretation of the so-called cookieverbod. According to General Matters only commercial lwa le sites under the new, strict rules, but according to OPTA, that is nonsense.
At this moment the website of the national government, not to the cookie law, nor like many other web sites, including those of the PVV and SP, who were in favour of the cookieverbod. The government refuses, however, to change that, it appears from the correspondence which Computerworld has obtained.
The Ministry of General Affairs is of the opinion that the new law, which websites require that they ask permission before placing non-esssentiële cookies, applies only to commercial web sites. According to spokeswoman Cynthia Heijne of watchdog OPTA, that the cookie law maintains, is that not so. Also a lawyer of the law firm SOLV calls the argument ‘obviously incorrect’.
The government places cookies of statistiekenpakket NedStat and would therefore need to secure the consent, the OPTA had previously already made clear. Only strictly necessary cookies, for example, be used for the authentication of a user or the remember of a shopping cart in a webshop, without the permission of the user are placed.
The current situation could lead to the OPTA, the Dutch government, and a fine, confirms spokeswoman Heijnen. They may not indicate whether there has been contact with the Ministry of General Affairs on the issue. “We do not make any statements about individual cases,” says Heijne.
Update 18:45: The government will examine how it can meet the cookie law on websites. Until that time, the cookies will be disable be on rijksoverheid.nl and government.nl. For the other websites of the government is enumerated or modifications are necessary’.