[shagie]

The official website for the European Union... with a cookie banner. https://european-union.europa.eu/

Surely there is a better way for the website operator to manage asking for permission for services that could be considered an invasion of privacy or avoiding using that all together.

[bertil]

And you are more than welcome to design one and submit your proposal to the Council. Note that no one here objects to asking for permission. People resent the intentionally poorly designed version that doesn’t give visitors a meaningful, informed choice. The complaints have targeted either deliberately confusing messages, modals that block access to services that don’t need invasive data processing, or pop-ups that re-appear as soon as you refuse them.

There are compliant and well-designed versions: if a website operator chooses to use a frustrating one, that’s not because the law is wrong; it’s because the operator favors their short-term profit from reselling data over convenience (which is almost always a losing bet).