Legal hacks like this could work if you don't care about your market share and using dodgy import constructions. That likely won't fly if you are Apple and selling in the EU through an EU based legal entity for compliance reasons already.
The simple issue is that the EU market is a rather large market that Apple can't really afford to lose a major portion of. Iphones are a good chunk of their revenue and a lot of that is EU customers. Also, most iphone users get their phones via their mobile subscription and don't buy direct from Apple. Those phones would have to comply with local rules.
When the EU says our way or the highway, the highway could be rather costly. As others are suggesting, all Apple needs to do is certify their phones water proof and/or put a slightly better battery in their phones (> 1000 cycles). That sounds like it should be doable for them.
They'll probably emphasize their awesome new batteries and water proofing of their devices in the usual announcements later this year and that will be it. Expect that to be something you hear a lot about in phone announcements from other manufacturers in the next half year. And maybe some vendors will actually do the other thing, which would be implement actually easy to swap batteries. It might a good way to differentiate in the market. And lots of Android phone makers struggle with that right now.
