The European Commission has released its proposal for the Digital Omnibus, a major update designed to unify the GDPR, ePrivacy, Data Act, Data Governance Act, and AI Act into a single, modernized framework. While the political timeline remains uncertain, today’s draft clearly signals Europe’s move toward a more coherent, simplified privacy landscape.
For users, this means more intuitive experiences and fewer repetitive requests. For businesses, it promises clearer obligations and reduced regulatory overlap, even as new responsibilities emerge around areas such as AI and legitimate interest.
What hasn’t changed is fundamental: privacy rights remain strong. The Omnibus aims to modernize consent experiences without weakening user autonomy, and Consent Management Platforms (CMPs) and Privacy-enhancing Technologies (PETs) remain essential for ensuring transparency and compliance.
Europe at a privacy crossroads
Usercentrics embraces and celebrates the Digital Omnibus proposal as an important step toward modernizing consent experiences and strengthening user trust across the digital ecosystem. Transparency, meaningful choice, and user control have always been at the heart of our mission, and the proposal reinforces how essential these principles are.
Europe has long set the global benchmark for data protection, and the Omnibus proposal builds on that leadership, simplifying rules, reducing duplication, and supporting more intuitive privacy experiences for both people and organizations. As digital ecosystems continue to evolve across the web, apps, and AI, the proposal strengthens a core principle we’ve championed for years: Consent is essential to fairness, accountability, and user trust.
Usercentrics sits at the center of this ecosystem, the infrastructure that helps businesses ensure user autonomy is honored everywhere data flows.
Modern consent must be contextual and well-designed
One of the clearest signals in the Digital Omnibus is that user consent remains essential, but it must be contextual, meaningful, and user-controlled. A bank, a retailer, a media platform, and an AI-driven app all have different relationships with their users, and consent needs to reflect those differences. A one-size-fits-all approach risks flattening nuance and weakening user control. CMPs play a critical role here — they preserve transparency, provide context, and ensure that consent remains clear and auditable as experiences modernize.
For businesses already using Usercentrics, the takeaway is simple: your CMP continues to meet the requirements of where regulation is, and is heading.
At the same time, the debate around “consent fatigue” highlights an important truth: fatigue is a design problem. Some implementations with confusing pop-ups and inconsistent UX have long undermined trust. The Omnibus moves the industry in the right direction by encouraging smoother, less repetitive interactions, while maintaining user rights.
Although the proposal introduces new nuances around AI and Privacy-enhancing Technologies (PETs), these do not replace consent; they complement it. AI can support personalization, and PETs and interoperable consent signals can reduce friction in the user experience, but none substitute for the moment a user chooses how their data should be used.
As ecosystems evolve, independent CMPs remain essential safeguards, ensuring transparency and preventing dependency on any single platform or gatekeeper.
Bottom line: Usercentrics is ready
The Digital Omnibus is a meaningful step forward, but like all large proposals, it will take time before anything becomes law. Nothing changes for our customers (you) today. We’ve always kept up to date with regulations globally, and we are keeping our products up to date in line with policy changes.
Your setup remains fully compliant.
Your CMP remains essential.
And we will guide you through every update, well in advance of any requirement.
We built Usercentrics on the belief that consent, not cookie banners, is the cornerstone of digital trust. When people understand who they’re sharing data with and why, trust grows. And that trust drives business growth. Usercentrics is built for the future. And we’re ready to support you every step of the way.
FAQ: What the Digital Omnibus means for you
Frequently asked questions
No. This is only a proposal. Nothing changes today, or in the short term. Your CMP remains essential, and Usercentrics will guide you through every update well in advance of any requirement.
No. The Omnibus may modernize how consent is collected or signaled, but transparency, user choice, and control remain central. Consent is still a core part of the GDPR.
Not at this stage. Usercentrics already aligns with the direction of the proposal, including better interoperability, streamlined experiences, and support for privacy-enhancing technologies.
Yes. We are monitoring the process closely and will guide you step by step long before any requirements take effect.
Absolutely. As privacy rules modernize and consent signals evolve, CMPs become even more important for transparent, auditable, user-centric data practices.
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