IAB Canada has received encouraging news from IAB Europe with regards to the ruling handed down yesterday (May 14, 2025) by the Belgian Market Court on its appeal of the February 2022 decision by the Belgian Data Protection Authority (APD) against IAB Europe and the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF) v2.0.
In its ruling, the Market Court has annulled the APD February 2022 decision, building upon its September 2022 interim ruling that had established procedural irregularities, notably the fact that the APD failed to adequately justify why it considered TC Strings as personal data.
The Market Court has also rejected the APD’s view that IAB Europe is a joint controller together with TCF participants for their own respective processing of personal data, for instance for the purpose of digital advertising – in line with the perspective adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in its judgment of 7 March 2024.
The Market Court upheld only part of the APD decision, namely that IAB Europe is a joint controller together with TCF participants solely in relation to the creation and use of TC Strings by publishers and vendors.
The corresponding changes to the TCF in order to accommodate this limited controllership have already been proposed as part of the action plan submitted to and validated by the APD in 2023, whose execution remains suspended. They could therefore be affected quickly to ensure compliance with the Market Court’s ruling. IAB Canada will continue to monitor and keep our stakeholders and clients updated on this case and the further development of the Framework. In the meantime, the TCF still remains in effect, and we are happy to connect with our colleagues at IAB Europe to continue observing this situation and to draft a response and plan of action.
“This decision builds upon the CJEU’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” noted Townsend Feehan, IAB Europe’s CEO, a position that is welcomed by IAB Canada. “We hope that this will signal the time to return to a meaningful and constructive dialogue with regulators that addresses technical and practical realities. Only that will allow us all to put in place workable and useful evolutions to the TCF that will benefit both users and TCF participants.”
IAB Europe has issued a press statement that has been posted on their website here and updated their FAQ document here.