The EU knew about DNT signals before GDPR was finalized and decided to ignore them. I know, I was a web dev at that time (and still am). This is on the EU and techbros, but having internet explorer disable all cookies by default would make tech bros upset, and the EU couldn’t have that, so they made the tech bros a little happier by allowing the consent banners instead.

www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/…/Pannetrat.pdf