(1) The EU fundamentally didn't care which standard so long as there was one; they only forced this because Apple dragged their feet with their own proprietary thing that wasn't a significant advantage. The other end of Apple's Lightning port being a USB port does not suggest it added anything except deliberate incompatibility.

(2) what would "significantly better" even look like? USB-C can do 120 watts, enough to fill a 20 Wh battery in 10 minutes, except the batteries themselves aren't ready to charge that fast.

(3) if someone somehow manages to make a significant advance, nothing prevents them from having two ports. Or indeed lobbying for a law change on the basis of a tangible thing they can demonstrate rather than a hypothetical that still hasn't happened in all the time since these discussions began.

The same Europeans that were miles ahead with their GSM standard?

We can compare that to the US. Here, we stayed stuck with power-thirsty analog phones for many years before bouncing through a litany of mutually-incompatible digital non-standards...and finally landed on the ~same actual-standards that Europe adopted.

I think they'll be OK. (I think the rest of us will be OK, too.)