Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU law is fine, the implementation used isn't. But never blame the EU laws for cookie banners; the law does not mandate banners at all, let alone the ones full of dark patterns to nag you into accepting anyway. That's all the industry. The industry could have come up with a standard, a browser add-on, respect a browser setting, etc but they chose the most annoying one to pester you, the user.
The EU law isn't fine. Many websites are free because they survive from ads. Ads make more money if you collect data. The EU law essentially cut the revenue of all these websites. Their choice is to not collect data (meaning less revenue) or show a popup (meaning more bounce rate, which means less revenue). People who think this is a good thing are being short-sighted. That's because this law mainly affects websites…
My business is to get money out of other people's wallets and bank accounts. I could get make much money if you just logged into your bank account and approved transactions whenever I told you to, or screamed less whenever I took the wallet out of your pocket on my own.
That there's a way to earn more money does not justify it as legitimate thing to do, and if you can't figure out how to run a service in legitimate ways does not mean that illegitimate ways that attempt to violate its users in secret suddenly become okay.