Lightning was good when it came out (compared to the various micro-USB options), but it's not held up. Even Apple knows this and they've moved away from it on their iPads.
The laws are not going to mandate USB-C of a certain revision, etc. The laws simply mandate cooperation in a market that has been mostly cooperative, save for a single participant.
The Personal Electronic Device Port Amendment Act 2025, and so on and so forth.
Tends to take years to develop new connectors, and longer still to develop new objectively better connectors.
Hopefully future EU mandates can optimize that near-decade timespan from standardization to being legally allowed by hardware manufacturers.
This seems like it inherently provides wiggle room when you have a legitimate reason that you can't follow the public standards?
Apple shipped it anyways, and all Lightning cables have failed or will fail for exactly the reasons it was rejected. Apple chose the cable because of how easily it fails.
Lightning was never good, and Apple has a long history of fucking customers, period.
Do you have some references for this? I had never heard of Lightning having been developed anywhere but at Apple and specifically for their iDevice line and a check on Wikipedia's Lightning connector page has no references to anything that can substantiate this claim. Either a great example of historical erasure, or you're making this up.
TL;DR: Source?