Their response was as follows: -
Dear Madam / Sir,
We thank you for your interest in the European Parliament website.
Indeed, the EU Cookies Directive effective since 25th May 2011 imposes the consent of the User during setup of cookies. We are currently considering the compliancy towards this opt-in policy. The principle of a Guideline is to establish a normative frame imposed to the member states. Then, the national authorities have to enact practical and restrictive measures for websites owners.
Requirement of User consent is not obvious regarding, for example, cookies setup by Google analytics,… In every case, the Institutions have to think in a practical way, about a coherent policy regarding this matter, which can take some time.
Therefore we thank you in advance for your patience.
Best regards,
Europarl Webmaster
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
DG COMMUNICATION
Directorate for Media
In other words, it sounds like they don’t know what to do about it either and they are going to wait and see what everyone else does!