I researched this and didn't find a conclusive answer yet. What I found out is:
The original plan was for both the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation [1] (not to be confused with the ePrivacy Direcive) to come into effect on 25 May 2018. The ePrivacy Regulation would have had a special exemption for analytics cookies. If that would have been enough to not require consent for Google Analytics I do not know.
Now the ePrivacy Regulation is delayed but the GDPR is not.
I didn't find a lot of information about what that means for the time after 25 May 2018. The following is from German sources (primarily e-recht24.de [2]) and is only from a German perspective.
Google's terms [3] in accordance with German law currently require consent in the case of AdSense but not for Google Analytics. According to [2] this is in obvious conflict with current EU law but the EU Commission denies that.
e-recht24.de [2] is careful to avoid a clear statement about the situation after 25 May but from my understanding they hint that the situation will not change. German law is already in conflict with EU law and this fact is ignored by all parties. The GDPR will not change that situation.
The original plan was for both the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation [1] (not to be confused with the ePrivacy Direcive) to come into effect on 25 May 2018. The ePrivacy Regulation would have had a special exemption for analytics cookies. If that would have been enough to not require consent for Google Analytics I do not know.
Now the ePrivacy Regulation is delayed but the GDPR is not. I didn't find a lot of information about what that means for the time after 25 May 2018. The following is from German sources (primarily e-recht24.de [2]) and is only from a German perspective.
Google's terms [3] in accordance with German law currently require consent in the case of AdSense but not for Google Analytics. According to [2] this is in obvious conflict with current EU law but the EU Commission denies that.
e-recht24.de [2] is careful to avoid a clear statement about the situation after 25 May but from my understanding they hint that the situation will not change. German law is already in conflict with EU law and this fact is ignored by all parties. The GDPR will not change that situation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPrivacy_Regulation_(European_...
[2] https://www.e-recht24.de/artikel/datenschutz/8451-hinweispfl...
[3] https://www.google.com/about/company/user-consent-policy.htm...