Sounds like the article is incorrect. The relevant standard for EU-wide regulations is EN 50566:2013, which allows manufacturers to choose the separation with up to 25mm (most vendors standardized on 15mm because this is the maximum separation allowed under the FCC standard).

The french disagree with this standard and specify the limits at 0mm and 5mm separation, which obviously increases absorption. However, they did not increase the absorption limits accordingly.

Thus, actually most phones are out of compliance with the new french regulations (ANFR describes it as "a large proportion of phones" as being out of compliance, sounds like de-facto it's almost all). Since the EU is more of an advisory body and allows individual countries to set such limits individually, the EU has issued an application restriction which prohibits their usage in France (presumably until manufacturers patch TX power limits downwards as Apple will most likely do).

I guess you can describe that as an "EU limit" since it's an application restriction approved by the EU, but it's not the same limit as applies in the rest of the EU, it's a local application restriction issued at the request of french regulatory bodies applicable only in france.

https://www.anses.fr/en/content/exposure-mobile-telephones-c...

https://ehtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/ANFR-Data-PDF-SAR-Eur...

https://www.anfr.fr/en/anfr/news/all-news/detail-of-the-news...

I can get behind removing the ambiguity of manufacturer-chosen testing distances and officially specifying this at 15mm. Or if you think that's unrealistic then 5mm and 0mm also make sense, but if you move the emitter closer you're gonna get a stronger signal and the SAR threshold should be adjusted accordingly. Which the french didn't do, because they're low-key catering to the "phones cause cancer" wackos here for political play.

But this isn't just an apple thing and there will be a patch reducing your signal strength for android too, most likely. iphones just get lots of media play.