European elections: Websites of German top candidates checked on GDPR compliance

The elections to the European Parliament are happening right now and all candidates are trying to mobilize any vote possible.
Meanwhile, campaigning has been digital for quite some time now. Their respective website is an important tool for all MEPs to inform citizens and potential voters about themselves and their party program.

Since May 25th 2018 all kinds of websites inform website visitors first and foremost about one thing: cookies and the processing of personal data. This is not something website operators do for fun, but it is something explicitly stipulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

A law to which also politicians, mandate holders and candidates must adhere to.
However, our check of the websites of all German top candidates in this EU elections showed that they are far from being GDPR compliant.

Mischa Rürup, CEO and Founder of Usercentrics comments:

From a business perspective, it is totally unacceptable for politicians who were responsible for the law and whose websites also must adhere to it, to still fail compliance.

Overview of all examined websites:

Method:
1. Check of the websites of the German top candidates for the European elections on criteria such as cookie banners and the number of third-party requests using the tool Webbkoll, which simulates the visit of a page with a browser such as Chrome
2. Double-check of the results with the tool disconnect.me

All six parties represented in the German Bundestag were considered. The AfD’s top candidate does not have his own website, so we examined the party website instead.

Learn more:

“Vor der Europawahl: Halten sich diese deutschen Spitzenkandidaten nicht an die DSGVO?”24.05.2019 Online Marketing Rockstars (in German)