Consent is one of the legal bases for processing personally identifiable information[1]. There are five more, among which "legitimate interest" can cover a variety of cases.
[1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
[1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
I'm working on that market and find that interpretation is quite difficult as soon as you have multiple actors around the table. Example: because recommendations from DPAs are not exactly the same, then you may have different requirements of the same company from different country legal department within the UE.