The obvious conclusion is that when you try to regulate something like this you arent going to get the behavior you want.
It's trivial to make a site that doesn't need a cookie banner: don't set any cookies. Modern web devs have probably forgotten, but this is actually the default behavior. Cookies don't get set unless you do something to make it happen.
And cookies that you actually need for functionality don't need a banner either. If you're setting a session cookie for logged in users so they stay logged in when navigating between pages, you don't need one.
Why, then, does practically every site in existence now have one? Because they set unnecessary cookies. Because they choose to set unnecessary cookies in order to track you for purposes that are not necessary to the actual functionality of the site.
Every single cookie banner you see is a big sign that says, "We value our ability to track you for marketing purposes more than we value your time."
Apparently they're willing to say that. I still see it as a win. No tracking and no banners would be ideal, but at least the regulation forces them to be honest and up front about what they're doing. I'd rather have tracking and cookie banners announcing it than tracking with zero indication of tracking.
They could have instead targeted it, and applied it, to third party ad providers only, like Google. And, btw, Google is big enough they could have just outright named it. They're worth as much as the GDP of Germany. Why not just make a Google law?
So yeah, maybe good intentions but it clearly shows the EU parliament is still too young and inexperienced.
And if you decide you need them, you can do them server side. That's not as good? Oh well. See above about want vs need.
Why not just make a Google law? Because Google is far from the only abuser. Using a VPN that routes through Europe is a real eye-opener. At least whatever country I got routed through apparently required that cookie banners include a list of every single partner who got your data. Pretty much every site had hundreds of them. One was literally over a thousand. No, the entire industry is rotten. And the epidemic of cookie banners just shows how rotten it is. They can't even be shamed into behaving.
I think it was something like Google knows what you eat, or will eat, for breakfast. Ok, Facebook too and some other trillion dollar companies. That is cross websites infrastructure, data mining, etc, etc - platforms in one word. Why not apply all this to the ones doing it though, instead of making all websites responsible?
In regards to analytics, the library needs to know what book you borrowed. Sure, a website doesn't 'need' in some platonic sense to know what article was most read today, but the EU parliament clearly does.
It is a hard problem though, what they were trying to address, but arguing that they were effective beyond showing that there is an EU jurisdiction is not at this point a persuasive argument.
It's fine though. This is still a very new parliament. It can and hopefully will learn from the experience and maybe even make an effective use of that very new EU jurisdiction, like maybe break up these tech monopolies, or try.
The only cookie is a functional one.