The EU gets convinces people to do things with fines and, ultimately, threats of jail time.
Now if one design people want to own and the other design only takes hold because of threats and fines, we ought conclude that the mandatory design is the weaker one. People aren't paying for replaceable batteries. They're paying for tough, cleanly built & waterproof phones. That is why there are sometimes actual queues outside Apple stored as people try to buy iPhones - people really think Apple designs great phones. For the EU to manage that they'd need a man with a truncheon standing off to the side forcing people to line up when they don't want to.
And they're doing this while Europe is being hit by crisis after crisis. This is a terrible time to be trying to reduce the quality of phones in the EU. It is bad enough in a good year. It is a terrible time to be drawing attention away from the actual problems that Europeans are facing. They should be working on making things cheaper and better for EU citizens.
Companies optimize for profit, that’s it. Capitalism only optimizes for that. Regulations are the means we can mandate some other values taking any kind of priority. Otherwise we would still have coke putting cocaine into our drinks.