As Rosa Barcelo, Matus Huba, Lucia Hartnett and Bethany Simmonds discuss in greater detail here, “[t]he European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”), a body with members from all EEA supervisory authorities (and the European Data Protection Supervisor), has recently established a taskforce to coordinate the response to complaints concerning compliance of cookie banners filed with several European Economic Area (“EEA”) Supervisory Authorities (“SAs”) by a non-profit organization NOYB. NOYB believes that many cookie banners, including those of ‘major’ companies, engage in “deceptive designs” and “dark patterns”.  The EDPB taskforce is established in accordance with Art. 70(1)(u) of the GDPR, which states that the EDBP must promote the cooperation and effective bilateral and multilateral exchange of information and best practices between SAs. The aim of this taskforce is to harmonize and coordinate the approach to investigating and responding to cookie banner complaints from NOYB. It remains to be seen how this will actually be done in practice and whether EDPB will limit the harmonization to procedural approach to the complaints, or whether it will also attempt to ensure consistent application of the underlying substantive rules.”

They provide a detailed analysis at the Security Privacy Bytes blog and comment that “the development of the taskforce could have a significant impact in streamlining the handling of the complaints it is set to investigate and could help companies better understand what is an acceptable pan-EU approach to cookie banners.”