Hi, the EU is not a government - we're not a United States of Europe. However, they clearly represent a few hundred million, generally above average wealth consumers and they have a conscience about the standards used by products manufactured in high volume, and what positive impact they might have on the creation of unneeded waste. The standards themselves are developed to encourage interoperability; the entire USB standards line show that you can deliver products that comply with standards, and still deliver the innovation, speed of connection and power capacity needed. We don't want proprietary standards, and licence fees to use them to make products more expensive.
There are European standards for AC voltages, plugs and sockets that are widely encouraged but not necessarily enforced. Often the EU is reduced to issuing directives, but it is still up to the sovereign nations to produce and enforce laws. There are some fantastic standards in electromagnetic compatibility and safety, which are similar to FCC, UL, CSA but again can lower the cost of bringing product to market - since I can have one set of agency approvals that apply to products being sold in EU rather than the bad old days when we had NEMKO, SEMKO, DEMKO, FIMKO, TUV, GS, BS, ...
and the use of the CE mark on products is helpful to consumers who can be sure that the products are safe, and have been tested to health and environmental standards. If the EU wants to make sure that products sold in the EU meet our needs, then surely manufacturers should consider how to meet the demands of the customer, not try to enforce their own proprietary standards through inaction ?