"The EU didn't force cookie banners, they just made it so that companies have to choose between the banners and their revenue, conversion tracking, and business metrics."

You don't have to choose between those.

Revenue tracking is clearly necessary; `SUM(total) FROM orders` hardly violates the GDPR. Conversion tracking can be done in an anonymized fashion, or via things like coupon codes. Plenty of business metrics left to go on.

The EU correctly decided the balance of things was too far in the corporate direction versus the consumer direction.