Elon Musk has spent years fighting European regulators. On Oct. 20 he thanked them.
The Tesla, SpaceX and X chief used a post on X to credit the European Union for its USB-C mandate. That’s the rule requiring a common charging standard, and it’s the reason Apple finally dropped its own Lightning connector from the iPhone.
“Have to give the EU regulators credit where it’s due for making all Apple products use USB-C,” Musk said in the post.
An unlikely fan of Brussels
The post passed 7.5 million views on the platform. Much of the attention came from who wrote it. Musk has clashed with the EU many times over the rules it sets for large tech companies.
The most recent fight cost him money. In December 2025, the European Commission fined X 120 million euros for breaking the transparency rules of the Digital Services Act.
He isn’t softening on Brussels in general. On this one regulation, though, he plainly thinks European intervention worked out well for consumers.
What the rule covers
The EU approved the directive in 2022. It requires new smartphones, tablets, headphones, keyboards, mice and certain other categories of electronics sold in the EU to support charging over USB-C.
The rules took effect on Dec. 28, 2024. Laptops were added on April 28, 2026.
Apple had the most to change
No company was hit harder than Apple. For more than a decade, the iPhone charged through Apple’s proprietary Lightning port, so every iPhone owner kept at least one cable that worked with nothing else.
Apple dropped Lightning with the iPhone 15 series in 2023. You can now charge an Android phone, an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook and plenty of accessories with the same cable.
That single cable is the outcome Musk credited, coming from a regulator that fined his own company 120 million euros less than a year earlier.
