Where I live, what the EU law provides is not called a "warranty"; we use another word. Here, warranties are optional and for the manufacturer; if you build sturdy products, you can have a life-time warranty programme, if you want to. The warranty applies to the manufacturer.
What the EU provides is - in English - a "warranty" with a fixed period of, say, two years that applies to the seller of the product, not the manufacturer.
As sellers, Apple have probably not wanted to comply with the two-year seller warranty, but the other part of the problem is that they have mislead consumers to believe that they were not covered by this protection for the full two years. And even if they are not the seller, the consumers purchasing Apple products would still be covered by the European warranty, albeit through the seller of the product, leaving little if any reason to get AppleCare.
Take [this link](http://www.apple.com/support/products/ipad.html) for the iPad:
Every iPad comes with one year of hardware repair
coverage through its limited warranty and up to 90 days
of complimentary support. AppleCare+ for iPad extends
your coverage to two years from the original purchase
date of your iPad and adds up to two incidents of
accidental damage coverage, each subject to a $49
service fee.
In other words, what is new is probably that Apple have found out that they can no longer dodge European consumer laws without a litany of suits and bad PR, so now they're resorting to this statement.