They definitely consulted a bunch of lawyers. The App Store makes on the order of $100B profit annually. Given that, a reasonable budget for consulting lawyers - on a matter which may result in them losing a substantial amount of that profit - would be massive. Even $1B in attorney fees would be a tiny price to pay to protect that.

Yes, we know they talked with the EU, but we don't know the content of those discussions. It's easy to assume they were checking whether their proposed implementation would satisfy the regulators. It's equally likely, even more likely, they were gathering information, posturing and probing to see how the EU would react, to gauge how best to craft their scheme to outwit them and what they could or could not easily get away with.

You can hold a negotiation and still screw the other side over afterwards - isn't that actually the best way to do it? Holding a meeting first to learn what cards your opponent has in their hand is just a better way to play any game.