I'm trying to understand the implications and status of the upcoming EU ePrivacy regulation[0], which I'd understood would remove the need for per-website consent dialogs and would read tracking/cookie preferences from web browser settings.

That sounded like a big improvement over repeatedly clicking through and attempting to understand the different dialogs shown by various websites.

On reading a recent set of changes[1] to the ePrivacy directive from 2019-11-08, it looks like all references to 'web browsers' have been removed, and the proposal is for consent management to move back to website owners and advertisers.

As a web user I'd like to manage my settings in one place when I start browsing. I can then rely on my web browser to adhere to and enforce my settings.

As a website owner I'd like to be able to rely on each user's own web browser settings to inform their consent to analytics and tracking. Primarily, this would reduce the number of distractions for users of the application, and allow them to get on with the tasks they want to achieve without delay. Reading these settings should be straightforward for the application, and there would be far fewer accessibility, storage, and maintenance concerns with regard to the user interface.

It also feels consistent with the way that web browsers can already provide content delivery preferences and locale/language settings to each application they interact with.

Does anyone here have a good sense for the direction that regulations are moving in here, and/or recommendations on EU representatives to contact with concerns like these?

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Regulation_(European_Union)

[1] - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CONSIL:ST_13808_2019_INIT&qid=1577719123146&from=EN