Trying to mandate that for all software might be too ambitious to politically succeed in practice - but mandating source code escrow for software used in certain regulated devices - smartphones, cars, planes, medical devices, etc - might be more achievable. You wouldn’t even need to touch copyright law, it would just need to be a product regulation. Of course, copyright law would have to be touched for a compulsory license, but consider that phase 2 and source code escrow as phase 1 - phase 1 could be enacted now, phase 2 saved for later
There's no such thing as a natural right, period. They're all imaginary creations of humans.
There is a recent movement trying to redefine them as such, led by moneyed interests that would obviously stand to profit from such arguments; but legal history is very clear: IP was never conceived on the grounds of being "natural" or "innate" in any way, but as a device to sustain certain economic sectors. IP is no more natural than subsidies for carmakers are natural.
Copyright and patent are not among those. The Constitution provides that congress can grant "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"
"Limited times" could be defined by congress to "expire" under whatever circumstances they choose.
Realistically, I'm sure there's a loophole they can leverage to achieve these. The EU is a major party to the WIPO and other members will likely be open to "renegotiating" if the alternative is the EU leaving completely rendering the WIPO pointless. The US pulled this stunt many times with other international orgs and treaties.
"We would never think about taking your IP but if you want to do business in this region, you must agree to voluntarily open-source all drivers after the product is no longer maintained."
Or:
"Of course you don't have to agree to anything but if you stop supporting the product and don't open source the drivers, consumers can obtain money damages for their devices becoming inoperable. "
Then it would be understood and agreed that anyone making software they have to release as open source what was closed source 5 years back. This way I would say that you can't bring the "but the competitors will use this to steal my business" argument.
What you would get in essence is a snapshot of what technology looked like 5 years ago (or a decent number of years people can agree on) and you can fork from there if there's a will to give a second life to various devices.
But really, I don't want an ugly phone because someone decided batteries should be user replaceable like in the old days. And yes, I like my iPhone to be sleek.
I don't know about ugly, but my galaxy s5 with a replaceable battery was barely thicker than an iphone 14 without one: 8.1 mm vs 7.8 mm, according to wikipedia. The difference is actually bigger between the 14 and the 7, so even without removable batteries, iphones are getting thicker.
The GS5 was also IP67 certified, and, indeed, it had no issues under heavy rain attached to my motorcycle handlebars, during multiple long trips.
I strongly doubt that having a removable cover would noticeably alter the phone's looks or thickness.
So no "permission" to release would be necessary if government's modified ther copyright laws to withdraw their granted protections after some "event" occurred.
The bigger problem is not the permission, it is actually finding the code so it could be 'released' once the event triggered. To make this work would require some form of required escrow in order to gain copyright protection in the first place where the code would be held until such time as the removal of copyright protection from it triggered, and then it could be released.