No, it's the builders of the consent notifications who are responsible for that. They are often skirting or even breaking EU law to make it a headache to refuse. The GDPR says, for example, that refusal should be just as easy as acceptance. Having to click to another screen to do that is... not that.

In reality a cookie consent notification can just as well be a small widget somewhere with an accept and refuse button, but it's the builders of these frameworks that have a vested interest in getting you to press accept.

I've applied for a job at one of these companies about a year ago, and I asked them about it. They said to me that according to their metrics, there's about 30% more acceptance if they only bury their Refuse button, so it's a legal risk they are willing to take.

Needless to say, when they invited me for a second conversation, I politely refused.

No, the shitty cookie screens with dark patterns is not the responsibility of the EU - although you could make the argument that the EU should have been stricter or more prescriptive.