Prior consent
Prior consent means that consent is obtained before a cookie is set or a tracker runs, so that nothing non-essential is stored or read on the device until the visitor has made a positive choice.Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive allows storing or accessing information on a device only on condition that the user has given consent. The sequence is part of the rule: information, then choice, then cookies. A banner that appears while analytics and advertising tags are already firing does not collect prior consent, even if the visitor later clicks Accept.
The Court of Justice confirmed in Planet49 (2019) that consent must be active and that pre-ticked boxes do not qualify, and the EDPB's Guidelines 05/2020 ruled out consent by scrolling or by continuing to browse. Implied consent, once common in the UK, is no longer accepted anywhere in the EU or by the ICO for non-essential cookies.
Technically, prior consent requires blocking: scripts are loaded with a neutral type and a category attribute, embeds are replaced by placeholders, and a tag manager fires tags only after the consent event. Google Consent Mode handles the Google tags by starting them in a denied state. The guide on blocking scripts until consent shows the markup. The opposite model, where tracking runs until the visitor objects, is the opt-out approach of US state laws and of Switzerland's Article 45c.