Can a website refuse me entry unless I accept cookies?

Consent must be freely given (Art. 4(11), 7(4)); a take-it-or-leave-it tracking wall removes the choice, which is why the EDPB and most DPAs reject hard cookie walls — “consent” extracted at a locked gate is invalid, making all the tracking behind it unlawful. The workaround you see everywhere: “pay or okay” — accept tracking or buy a subscription. News publishers won tolerance for it in several countries where the price is genuine and modest and the core service is otherwise comparable. For dominant platforms the walls are closing: the EDPB’s Opinion 08/2024 says very large platforms generally cannot make “pay” the only alternative to behavioural ads, and Meta’s consent-or-pay design earned a €200m DMA fine — a third, less-personalised free option is the direction of travel. Your practical options at a wall: check for a hidden “continue without accepting” link (some regulators forced one), use reader mode or archived versions for one-off articles, or simply leave — and for walls without any reject route, screenshot and report: banner sweeps are standing DPA programmes and dark-pattern rules apply to the design. Rules may move again with the Digital Omnibus — tracked on What’s changing.