> And that is because they are cheaper to operate: the market decided that, rather than a regulator.

This is not true. The US has parallel regulation that encourages the phase out of incandescent bulbs [1]. True to form it's a lot weaker than the EU regulation but it sends the same message.

> This regulation makes life for startups disproportionately harder than for Google and FB that already have an army of EU lawyers on payroll.

This is not true. In fact the GDPR makes it clear that for small businesses (<250 employees) most of the control burden is relieved.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/cfl/how-energy-independence-and-security...

Both the US and EU regulations were widely flouted; it was easy to get incandescent bulbs in practice. There's actually one in the room I'm in now for the simple reason that getting any other kind of bulb to work with dimmers was a nightmare; until a year or so ago, nearly all the dimmers sold in the UK were designed for incandescent bulbs only. The EU had, and still has, no interest in actually fixing this. Instead of making LED bulbs more practical to use they plan to crack down even more strictly on the alternatives, including new efficiency restrictions that effectively ban most stage lighting used by theatres and concerts.

I got some LED bulbs recently that are all glass, so they look exactly like incandescents, they have the same color temperature as "warm white" incandescents (i.e. 2700K), they are as bright or brighter than the incandescents they replace (800 lumens) and they are $1 apiece in quantities of 2. This may be an aberration, but it has certainly made me certain that I should always search for good and cheap LEDs in the future, and not waste time with any other type.

I also found some LED bulbs that have simulated filaments inside clear bulbs for an old-fashioned look, and again the incandescent color temperature.

I've even found cheap LED replacement bulbs for the various interior lights in my car that look just like incandescents.

So I think it's kind of passé to be debating LEDs at this point.

Have you found an LED replacement for the light in your oven? As far as I'm aware, those are all still incandescent, simply due to the temperatures involved.

Has someone prohibited such bulbs? In the US, I think there was some exemption for utility incandescents.

I'm not sure you grasp how poor the LED situation is over here in the UK. Some of the other light fixtures here have similar glass LED bulbs (non-dimmable, naturally) and they're pretty decent replacements for incandescents so long as you can live with the limitations - they're also discontinued and cost several times that price when they were available. The only place I can find selling something similar is charging £5.50 (about $7.50) per bulb for something off-brand, though I guess at least that claims to be dimmable: https://www.toolstation.com/shop/p95506 The last off-brand LED bulb I got from there died after about a month mind you.