That sounds like a wheeze that I've heard before.

Site builders argue to themselves that what the regular user would want to do -- e.g. close the site and browser, come back to it and expect the items in the cart are remembered (for some amount of time, e.g. a month, not forever) -- is something the GDPR (or ePR) would strictly prohibit. Neither prohibit this. You can use persistent cookies or local storage for maintaining the user's cart.

The reason they massively overstate what the regulations prohibit is because there are many things they want to do: user tracking and analytics, marketing engagement, etc., and know fine well the regulations prohibit that unless they get consent. So they pretend they can't possibly even do a basically functional site without getting consent, which is bollocks, so they don't feel so bad about imposing a consent banner on every visitor.

The same thing happened in the UK where businesses told customers lies that "Health & Safety made me do this" or "the EU made me do this"

https://web.archive.org/web/20190627174442/http://www.hse.go...

https://web.archive.org/web/20200131200512/https://blogs.ec....