How will they figure out that there is a better standard in the future? Certainly not with a study in the EU.
They're going to have to send investigators to more advanced foreign countries to figure out what charger to use.
They're going to have to send investigators to more advanced foreign countries to figure out what charger to use.
As a EU citizen I benefit each time EU forces big companies like banks, telecoms to do the right thing for the citizens and be just a tiny bit less greedy. I was not on HN when telecoms were regulated to have small roaming charges , or when companies were forced to print clear information on their product labels, or when banks were forced to have some limits on the ATM charges but something tells me americans predicted a big collapse in EU and that we will have no telecoms and banks anymore. But reality shows that for telecoms we have even better prices then US, so for some reason regulations did not collapse this giants.
And yet, we managed to also adopt USB-C after that.
This is a law that mandates USB-C.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_external_power_supply
So the fear that somehow the EU will freeze in time while the rest of the world adopts futuristic connectors is unfounded.
Creating something in isolation, with virtually no chance of it becoming "allowed" by an hostile state actor is nice, expensive, and thus won't happen. If you want to figure out if an idea works, lots and lots of field tests are what you want.
The EU is never going to produce a charger that isn't backwards compatible with USB-C. They'd better hope nobody comes up with a cheaper alternative that catches on in Asia.