The EU directive actually requires that opting out of cookies be as simple as opting in, which hardly any of these pop-up systems allow. Unfortunately, because of the limited power of the EU, it is up to members states to actually enforce these rules. So the corrupt idiots you should stop voting for are members of your own national assembly.

No, the solution is: Don't save unnecessary data about your visitors. Then you don't need any Cookie banner.

If you follow EU politics closely, you'll notice the corrupt idiots are mostly (though not exclusively) in national politics and in the European Commission (which is nominated by member States, not elected). The European Parliament is by far the most progressive and humane legal institution we have across Europe, if only any government cared to apply the laws they pass.

We have this pattern in Western Europe (eg. France/Germany) where everything is blamed on the EU when in fact the most malicious legal interpretations come from national politics. Example: EU regulations state network service operators MAY keep logs for a maximum of one year, FR regulations claim they MUST for minimum two years.

The problem is not the EU directive; it's the lack of enforcement. See https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-422-formal-gdpr-complaints-ner...

I have a user agent that don't accept cookies. So I do not care what the sites tries to give me, they just go to /dev/null. Why oh why do I need to see those stupid banners then?

Wow, this is exactly the "solution" that all the tracking companies love to hear from the people.