Well the law is implementend in an annoying fashion. For functional cookies there is no requirement to ask permisson. But many websites choose to block all content asking to permit them to place additional cookies for benefits, i.e. tracking cookies.

Like the author said:

  Cookies are, as the EU commision correctly noted, 
  fundamentally flawed, because they store potentially 
  sensitive information on whatever computer the user 
  happens  to use, and as a result of various abuses and
  incompetences, EU felt compelled to legislate a "notice 
  and announce" policy for HTTP-cookies.