I don't think that is rational at all. Have you ever looked at vintage car regulations in Europe? There are none, basically-- if your car is old enough, neither accident nor emission mitigation/prevention are required at all.
Why would you expect that this is going to change?
For one, cars old enough to be without emissions or safety equipment are becoming more rare, to the point that they are now worth a significant amount of money. Anything that is currently in that grey, "pre-classic" area is already a very complicated machine that is very hard to maintain without OEM spares and support. Anything newer is designed from the ground up to hit a specified lifetime then get ground up into flakes for recycling. Opinions vary on the positive outcomes of this.
For two - regulations are constantly changing. Many cities have low-emissions zones. The EU is making significant changes to their vehicle end-of-life laws.
"Poor people" are not going to be maintaing classic old cars as a cheap form of transport, like some rose-tinted view of Cuba. They already lease brand-new cars.
Where buying a car is really expensive? The only places that come in mind are those packed cities that require a parking place for a car. Nothing to do with EV.
Pretty much world-wide. The cost of new cars has risen several times faster than inflation for at least a few years now.
Since they cost less to run and are generally better than the alternative, poor people will appreciate the step up just as everyone else does.
Also, given that polluted air affects poor people the most, getting rid of all that exhaust of old worn out cars with ICEs will be a good thing in any case.
That's a case by case basis and not valid blanket-wide over everyone in every city on the whole continent. Outside of HN bubble, not everyone lives in big cities with high speed rail, underground subways or working remotely in small villages with amazing bicycle paths
A lot of tier 2 cities are heavily underdeveloped in that regard and need a car for commute to work outsider or inside the city, unless you wanna spend 1-2+ hours/day, each way, on public transit switching and waiting on buses since such cities sprawled out and grew in size a lot, but public transit infra is still stuck in the 90s with slow busses and no trains. Car ownership is still the only way you can have some free time between work, sleep and commute.