[jkaplowitz]

Neither the GDPR nor the ePrivacy Directive (cookie law) requires consent for cookies that are technically necessary to operate a website, including those to reflect a user-initiated login action. This is separate from consent to tracking for advertising, marketing, and analytics purposes.

The cookie law doesn’t pretend to require consent for non-essential cookies placed on end user decides - it does require that consent. But, yeah many of the popups handle this in misleading ways where the verb “pretend” is quite accurate. This is exactly the same problem of under enforcement and misaligned incentives that limits the effectiveness of the GDPR, even though the two laws have different scopes and requirements.

Yes, you correctly understood the GDPR downside I was describing.