Its quite likely the courts in other countries will disagree.

The last para of that article says they are still not allowed in the Netherlands.

Cookie walls exist in various places, and some are simply difficult to navigate, which makes them a cookie wall, imho. Can you imagine if CNIL won that case.
The whole cookie farce in Europe is a nightmare, and is an example of badly developed guidance and laws. It had to be modified a year or so back, and, personally, the whole thing is still annoying.

When the "cookie law" was made (e-privacy directive), one of the man who participated to its elaboration claimed that he didn't think that it would lead to the annoying banner, on each sites. Really? How are EU based sites supposed to collect the consent from visitors another way?! Also, CNIL and other watchdogs insisted that the information must be clearly presented to the visitor, etc etc...

I can't wait for the new e-privacy directive, which is "supposed" to get ride of the cookie law, and do things "differently", however, I also worry that the simplified, better approach, would make things worse.

Not to mention that Internet giants are already shifting to other tracking methods. Since the EU is so smart, they speak exclusively about cookies, which is not covering the local data storage which is now in web browsers, internet giants can exploit this...

I’m stuck trying to figure out a scenario where
(a) cookies are genuinely essential to the functioning of the site
and
(b) this fact does not become obvious to the cookie-less user upon loading a second page

Regardless of governments (or countries) wanting to do data privacy, they are too late to the party since that horse is already out of the barn and the way the web is structured, the tech giants are three leaps ahead of their two steps back...

What annoys me is that the cookie law (and GDPR) means I have to allow cookies on all sites so they know I have agreed to cookies and do not keep showing me banners.

I used to use a cookie whitelist Firefox extension that meant I only needed to allow cookies from sites that actually required them.

the cookie law (and GDPR) means I have to allow cookies on all sites

Somewhere on each of my Legal pages I have an apologetic note explaining that if you don't want to be logged by Analytics, you have to leave a cookie saying so.

You can’t win for losing.

Personally I don't allow any third party cookies.

Secondly I don't allow any third party scripting.

Thirdly I don't allow js (I have to whitelist the site if it has any value to me)

Finally, the web is now pretty neat and clean, quick, responsive, and I worry LESS about that other stuff (privacy) because I wear a mask, gloves, and social distance from such behavior, and if the site is egregious, I simply social distance myself by never returning.

However, the average user out there has no clue where to find a mask, gloves, or how to social distance from such behavior. So Nanny has to take a hand.

</LOL, Ha! Chuckles Satire>