• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, Yesterday

The IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) used as the foundation for most online advertising is illegal in the EU, the Belgian Court of Appeal has ruled.

The court found this week that the technology that supports online ads violates several principles of the General Data Protection Regulations, an EU digital privacy law that took effect in 2018.

On May 14, 2025, the Market Court rules on the appeal lodged in 2022 by IAB Europe against decision in 2021 and 2022 of the Litigation Chamber, the court’s timeline states.

The “court's decision shows the consent system used by Google, Amazon, X, Microsoft, deceives hundreds of millions of Europeans,” Johnny Ryan, senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICFCL) and the Open Markets Institute, stated. “The tech industry has sought to hide its vast data breach behind sham consent popups. Tech companies turned the GDPR into a daily nuisance rather than a shield for people."

For seven years, the tracking industry has used the TCF as a legal cover for Real-Time Bidding (RTB), the advertising auction system that operates behind the scenes on websites and apps, the ICFCL explained.

RTB tracks what Internet users look at and where they go online. It then broadcasts this data to a host of companies, enabling them to keep dossiers on every Internet user.  As a result, it is impossible to provide the necessary information that must accompany a consent request.

IAB Europe, which filed an appeal regarding the earlier decision, released a statement on Wednesday.

The decision builds on the Court of Justice of the European Union’s reasoning that IAB Europe “should not be viewed as a joint controller together with TCF participants in relation to subsequent data processing, so anything other than the processing of TC Strings,” the statement read.