Cookie Policy

The European Parliament website sets cookies in order to enable or enhance some functions offered within our pages.

Besides the persistent and session cookies needed for this, we also set analytics cookies in order to monitor the navigation of our users and improve the quality of their experience while visiting our website.

Analytics cookies are added by our Web Analytics tool, AT Internet, and are considered as third party cookies. They help us to prepare aggregated and anonymous statistical reports on the navigation of our visitors.

You may consult the list of all cookies used within our pages by following this link:

You may accept or refuse analytics cookies to be added on your device by following this link:

Parliament’s website uses also server logs in order to be able to analyse, to monitor and to diagnosis our technical infrastructures and applications. This help us to assume our operational security, to investigate on incidents, to monitor our network and telecommunication performance and to provide user assistance.

Most websites you visit will use cookies in order to improve your user experience. They enable websites to “remember” you – either for the duration of your visit (using a “session cookie”) or for repeat visits (using a “persistent cookie”).

Cookies can have a host of different functions. They let you navigate between pages efficiently, storing your preferences and generally improving your experience of a website. Cookies make the interaction between you and the website faster and easier. If a website does not use cookies, it will think you are a new visitor every time you move to a new page on the site. For example, when you close a menu and move to another page, it will not remember that you have closed the menu on the previous page and it will display the next page with that page’s menu open.

Some websites will also use cookies to enable them to target their advertising or marketing messages based, for example, on your location and/or browsing habits.

Cookies may be set by the website which you are visiting (“first party cookies”) or they may be set by other websites which run content on the page you are viewing (“third party cookies”).

A cookie is a simple text file stored on your computer or mobile device by a website’s server. That server will subsequently be able to retrieve or read the contents of that cookie. Cookies are managed by your browser. Each cookie is unique and contains some anonymous information such as a unique identifier, site name, digits and letters. It allows a website to remember your browsing preferences.

First party cookies are set by the website which you are visiting, and they can only be read by that site.

Third party cookies are set and used by a different organisation from the owner of the website which you are visiting. For example, to measure its audience a website might use a third-party analytics company, which will set its own cookie to perform that service. The website you are visiting may also have embedded content, e.g. YouTube videos or Flickr slideshows. Those sites may also set their own cookies.

More significantly, a website might use a third-party advertising network to deliver targeted advertising.

Advertising services are not used by Parliament.

Session cookies are stored temporarily during a browsing session and are deleted from the user’s device when the browser is closed.

Persistent cookies are saved on your computer for a fixed period (usually a year or longer) and are not deleted when the browser is closed. They are used where we need to who you are for more than one browsing session.

A web beacon is an often-transparent graphic image that is placed on a web site that is used to monitor the behaviour of the user visiting the web site. It is often used in combination with cookies.

With local storage, web applications can store data locally within the user’s browser. Before HTML5, application data had to be stored in cookies, included in every server request. Local storage is more secure, and large amounts of data can be stored locally, without affecting website performance.

A device fingerprint is a technique used to collect sets of web user agents’ parameters transmitted by the web protocols to the web services when interacting with them. It is used for purposes similar to those of cookies (e.g. user agent interface optimization, analytics for web service improvement and marketing, profiling for targeted advertising).

Several log types are used to support web services. Logs can be generated by network devices like firewalls, proxies and intrusion prevention and detection systems, web and application servers and web applications for technical verification, functional and compliance auditing and security purposes.