I think it's a law with good intentions which was horribly implemented for which now the rest of the world will be feeling the effects for decades.

I think there are very, very few people who are earnestly proud of the work the EU did with this regulation every time they waste finite brain cycles on yet another cookie banner. I don't really know why Europeans use this as an example of their system of governance working as hoped.

It's possible that the EU thought: "This is likely enough to end cookie tracking. Surely no company would want to put their users through horrible consent UX just to retain their tracking!" ...and were wrong about just how far companies would be willing to abuse their user's experience, either because of the benefits of tracking, or purely out of malicious compliance.

The anticipated effect of requiring consent is that by forcing companies to shine a flashlight on their own bad behavior, they will instead choose to correct their behavior. That didn't end up happening in practice.

Much as I like the law, I'm sure I saw a headline when it first went live along the lines of "EU's own website about this law violates it", which suggests[0] that perhaps it could have been done better.

That said, I just looked at it, and this is my idea of a well-made popup: https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

[0] But for the Betteridge law of headlines and Gell-Mann amnesia