Honestly your reading comprehension is not good today.
They said if the government “drive the process of forking” which could mean encourage a group of academics to do it, or a commercial consortium. It does not mean the EU government take on the task themselves. *
It is self evident from actual EU behaviour that any mobile os that gets to users will be legally required to be a surveillance disaster area, regardless of origin, and the only people that have prevented this already are evil US corporations.
* edit to add, the EU did encourage many technical efforts vital to the mobile phone industry at different times with a mix of funding, political support etc. The Arm people would tell you AMBA (a standard relating to SoC component integration) wouldn’t exist without this, and yet no one would classify this as “a creation of the EU” but very much enabled by them. For whatever reason since about 2005 their strategic ability in this area has not merely disappeared but become actively wrong.
If the EU government told a group of academics "hey, go make a phone" it wouldn't have mass surveillance. If it insisted on being closely involved in the process, then it would.
Do you think you would be allowed to sell such a phone to normal people in any serious quantity? (I know HN people get delusional about using laptops as mobile phones, but here is a hint: you wouldn’t. You would be hauled up for enabling distribution of CSAM etc until you stopped).
Look at how they treat Graphene, and that is an afternarket mod niche.
Yes, I do think you'd be allowed to sell a phone to normal people in serious quantity. The kerfuffle with Graphene was about whether or not they specifically targeted organised criminals, Anom-style. No charges were made - some idiot politician just assumed Graphene==Encrochat and made a public statement based on that.