Agreed. Many countries already require publicly funded research be made available for open access. A list of US government agencies that require such access after an embargo period is presented here: https://scholcomm.columbia.edu/open-access/public-access-man...

The NIH's decision to require open access a year after publication was actually a huge step forward, and that must have been a decade ago now. Pretty much everyone who isn't a publisher would prefer it be immediate, but there's a limit to what the funding agencies can do without congressional approval (or interference).

> Is there any evidence that this is connected to other political issues?

No, there isn't in this specific instance.

However, reading news for the past year did give me a overall feeling that ties between China and EU are getting closer while ties between China and US, as well as EU and US are getting more strained.

It’s interesting because, on the surface, it appears that China is exerting more control over its population while the EU seems to be giving back control to its population. But reading between the lines, the EU is actually moving toward more political control over its member countries, just like China but in a more progressively palatable format.