Mozilla Firefox, DuckDuckGo, and Vivaldi jointly called on the European Union to allow browsers to enable default tracking refusal without mandatory prompts, in a statement addressing the EU's Digital Omnibus regulation. The trio urged the EU to drop requirements for install-time or session-start consent prompts, advocating for privacy protections to be enabled by default to reduce user fatigue and improve choice, according to medianama.com.
The joint statement was issued as part of feedback on the Digital Omnibus, a regulatory package published on November 19, 2025, aimed at streamlining EU digital laws. The browsers emphasized that site-level consent mechanisms, such as cookie pop-ups, cause 'consent fatigue' and irritate users, citing statistics that 76% of people find such pop-ups annoying and 68% prefer to avoid them entirely. They also requested that browser extensions be allowed to handle user consent without being mandated, to protect browsers that prioritize privacy by design.
This appeal highlights ongoing tensions in digital privacy regulation between user experience and compliance burdens. The Digital Omnibus seeks to rationalize consent frameworks across the EU, but the browsers argue that current site-level consent models do not represent real choice and penalize privacy-focused browsers. Their position aligns with broader industry debates on balancing user control with streamlined privacy protections, reflecting concerns over the effectiveness and user impact of cookie consent mechanisms.
The Digital Omnibus regulation proposal, which the browsers responded to, was published by the European Commission in November 2025. The next phase in the EU legislative process will determine whether default tracking refusal by browsers becomes permissible without mandatory consent prompts.