Practical guide

France & Italy have changed the rules on email tracking

If you send marketing emails to anyone in France or Italy, the way you're allowed to track opens has just changed — and there are firm deadlines attached. Here's what happened, the dates that matter, and the small handful of changes that keep you on the right side of it. No legal degree required.

Prepared 3 July 2026

What's actually changed

Most email tools drop a tiny, invisible image into your emails called a tracking pixel. When someone opens your email, that image loads, and it quietly reports back that they opened it. That's how you get your open rate.

Think of a tracking pixel like a little doorbell hidden in the envelope. The moment your reader opens the letter, it rings back to you — without them knowing they pressed anything.

In April 2026, the privacy regulators in France (the CNIL) and Italy (the Garante) both decided that this doorbell now needs permission. They're treating a tracking pixel the same way the law already treats cookies: you generally need the person's clear yes before it fires. A few narrow exceptions aside, silent open-tracking is no longer a free-for-all.

The two countries landed in roughly the same place, but with different deadlines and a couple of different details — so it helps to see them side by side.

Does this apply to me?

This is the part people get wrong. The rules follow your reader's location, not your business address. A sole trader in Manchester with a dozen subscribers in Paris or Milan is covered, the same as a company based there would be.

So the honest test is simple: do you have any subscribers in France or Italy? If yes, read on. If you genuinely have none, you can file this away — but most email lists that have been growing for a while pick up a few EU readers without you noticing.

The key dates

The deadlines to put in your diary

Date	Country	What happens
14 April 2026	France	The CNIL’s recommendation is published (adopted 12 March 2026). From this day, any new contact you collect must be covered by proper consent straight away — there’s no grace period for new sign-ups.
29 April 2026	Italy	The Garante’s guidelines (Provvedimento n. 284, adopted 17 April 2026) are published in the official gazette, starting a six-month countdown.
14 July 2026	France	The France deadline. For contacts you already had before 14 April, you must have told them you use tracking and given them an easy way to object by this date. After it, an un-notified contact needs a fresh opt-in.
28 October 2026	Italy	The Italy deadline. Everything must be compliant by this date — consent in place and an easy way for readers to switch tracking off.

In short: 14 July 2026 is your nearest cliff-edge (France), and 28 October 2026 is the second (Italy). If you act once, sensibly, you can clear both in the same sitting.

What needs a yes — and what doesn't

The line both regulators drew

Needs consent

Tracking opens to measure or improve your marketing or ad campaigns
Building a picture of someone from how they read — their interests, engagement, habits
Any pixel that fires on open and can identify the individual reader
Following the same person across devices
Fraud checks that quietly collect more than is strictly needed

May be allowed without consent

Security and sign-in steps (e.g. confirming an account activation)
Basic deliverability housekeeping — strictly to adjust how often you send, or to spot and drop inactive addresses — as long as the data isn’t reused for anything else
Purely anonymous, non-individual open counts (Italy)
Messages you’re legally required to send, like a mandatory notice (Italy)

One difference worth knowing:France wants pixel consent kept separate from your general yes, email me permission. Italy will let you combine the two into one request — but only if the wording is neutral, clear and doesn't pressure anyone. When in doubt, keep them separate; it satisfies both.

How to adjust your emails

Practical steps, in order

1
Find out if you’re even tracking opens.
Most email platforms switch open-tracking on by default. Dig into your sending or tracking settings and see whether it’s on. You can’t fix what you haven’t found.
2
Decide whether you truly need it.
Be honest — do your open rates change any decision you make? Many small senders run perfectly well on clicks, replies and sales. If open data isn’t earning its keep, the cleanest fix is to turn it off for your French and Italian readers and skip the whole compliance headache.
3
Fix new sign-ups first.
On your sign-up form, add a short, unticked box explaining you use a small pixel to see whether emails get opened, and ask them to opt in. Unticked matters — a pre-ticked box doesn’t count as a real yes.
4
Notify your existing French contacts before 14 July.
Send a brief, friendly note explaining you use open tracking and giving them a one-click way to say no thanks. That’s the France requirement for people who signed up before the rules landed.
5
Sort your Italian contacts before 28 October.
Have their consent in place, and give them a way to switch tracking off while still receiving your emails — the two are separate choices in Italy.
6
Add a stop-tracking link to your emails.
Separate from your usual unsubscribe link. France specifically wants this; Italy expects an easy, ongoing opt-out (often a small link or icon in the footer). One footer link covers both.
7
Keep the receipts.
Be able to show who agreed and when. Your email tool likely logs this — just make sure you know where to find it.
8
Tidy your privacy wording.
Update your sign-up page and privacy note to mention, in a line or two, that you use a tracking pixel and what for.

Your 15-minute checklist

If you do nothing else, do these

Check whether open-tracking is switched on in your email tool
Decide: keep it, or switch it off for EU readers and move on
Add an unticked opt-in for tracking to your sign-up form
Email existing French subscribers a notice + easy objection link (before 14 July)
Get consent and offer a tracking-only opt-out for Italian subscribers (before 28 October)
Put a stop-tracking link in your email footer, separate from unsubscribe
Add a line about the pixel to your privacy note

The honest bottom line

Don't panic, and don't over-engineer this. For most small senders, the safest and simplest move is to turn open-tracking off for your EU readers and lean on the signals that come from a genuine action — clicks, replies, sales. Those tell you more anyway, and they sidestep almost all of this.

If you do want to keep tracking opens, then it comes down to three things: ask permission clearly, make it easy to switch off, and keep a record. Get those in place before 14 July for France and 28 October for Italy, and you're covered.

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Sources

This guide is a plain-English summary to help you get organised — it isn't legal advice. Dates and details are accurate as of 3 July 2026. If your list is large or you're unsure how the rules apply to your situation, it's worth a quick check with a data-protection professional.