This is because people in the US are used to dealing with legislation that means almost nothing until it gets interpreted by the courts, and no one wants to be

This is because people in the US are used to dealing with legislation that means almost nothing until it gets interpreted by the courts, and no one wants to be that first test case so their lawyers take the worst-case approach. Just like many years of effort have been expended on just one paragraph from Sarbanes Oxley. Second is that there is an opinion some have (based on some recent cases) that European courts hate American companies and will throw the most extreme penalty at them that they can get away with. Third, from an end-user's standpoint, who here isn't sick and tired of having to click on the "Accept cookies" link all the time? Personally, if I have issues with specific cookies, I'd rather handle that automatically via client-side techniques.