It had been in the works for a while, but now it has formally been adopted. From the article:
The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their products to this requirement.
I developed and shipped iOS apps, and what you wrote is actually incorrect.
Apple does not allow developers to put on the app store applications built targetting an iOS version below a certain point.
Also Apple controls the build environment for applications which are listed on the App Store: you have to build and push the app for the store on Xcode (contractually and enforced cryptograhically) and it even has to be running on a Mac computer (contractually).
So it’s not up to individual developers what the minimum OS version they support for their app, at least not if they want to be able to distribute it via the App Store (which is the only way they can be distributed for non-rooted phones).
Absolutelly, lots of devs just go along with the Xcode defaults (which by the way, are a soft push by Apple) and build against a very recent iOS version, but those who want to support really old iPhones aren’t allowed to.