But EU has a pretty uniform laws, so this comes to just one issue: time. Did Apple start working on this feature before EU implemented the law? This might be the case, but even if it was after, they could start working on implementing that sooner.

It would be good for US companies to know that EU laws are not "guidelines", just as US enforces their laws on companies from outside.

Sure but we're talking about the unified law of almost an entire wealthy continent here. It's EU ffs. Not some small island country in the middle of the ocean.

This looks to me like yet another bet from Apple: "they'll buy iPhones anyway, let them wait".