> but if there's an overriding reason to protect consumers, then it is entirely irrelevant how long companies have been doing this, how many do this and in what other countries they do it.

I hear what you're trying to say, but there are problems with this basis.

There is no clear established legal-nexus between the your purported statement of "protecting consumers", and banning the use of any data center owned by multi-national corporate entities who host protected data exclusively internal to the EU in accordance with all known EU data-protection regulations. Now to be clear, I'm not saying this is your statement or position.... but it's what you wrote.

So it boils down to a false-dichotomy; This is protectionism, but not to be confused with consumer protection. The protectionism is the kind protecting EU owned & operated data centers.

I think analogies are awful, but to give an analogy it's like banning a product sold by any multi-national corporation simply on the basis they are not originally EU multi-national corporations. For instance, banning the sale of McDonald's chicken-nuggets, because McDonald's is a foreign corporation, and then alleging the corporation violate the consumer data protection laws because the nuggets are not EU nuggets

It makes no sense because there is no causal-link or rational basis, it's all irrational. Just because irrational laws have been the norm for a while, as you say particularly in Germany, doesn't make them rational now. That's a variation of the ad-populism fallacy.