Why should Apple divert resources creating a secondary environment?

Because it's the law in a region Apple wants to do business. Simple.

Apple did what they thought was best. The EU said no and the next step is the court system. When that result is known Apple can decide what markets to operate in.

When Apple Kerberos all their services they essentially made it possible to granularly manage service availability by user, device, and region.

The EU fining schedule is so out of proportion that it creates a real business risk to Apple that may be greater than the EU market size.

I don’t think the EU efforts are as detailed or grounded in reality as the EU considers them.

As a spectator I can’t wait to follow the ups and downs of this.

Except important products will be pulled from the App Store because they will become exclusives in 3rd party stores.

What if Apple presented better deal terms on a level playing field?

These "important products" are already getting out of the Apple Store, but instead of moving to the competing App Store alternative (which currently doesn't exist), they are moving to another ecosystem