Funnily enough, the UK has just had a report commissioned about it (and I'm focussing on the UK here since the Guardian is based there and OP alson said they were accessing the UK site). It notes that "In principle, data protection law does not prohibit business models that involve consent or pay." Direct pdf link: https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/impact-assessments/4032418/consent-or-pay-impact-assessment.pdf
Gotta love how the legal system here outright ignores the laws that they're ruling on, GDPR states that the accept and reject buttons need to be equally accessable.
Of the 2 million most used sites in the EU not even 10% pass the lowest bar of the GDPR. Thing is, that when the problem is this wide spread, the courts don't want to open the floodgates when they start to percecute all those websites.