It’s not doable to purchase an iPhone 14 or iPhone SE 3 from Apple within the EU. And lots of of Apple’s older equipment additionally disappeared from the corporate’s cabinets within the European Union, too.

It’s all a results of a EU legislation that, as of Saturday, banned the sale of handsets with proprietary charging ports. Apple was a major focus of the laws.

iPhone SE ban: No extra Lightning port within the EU

In 2022, the European Parliament handed a legislation that made USB-C the usual charging port throughout a variety of shopper electronics. And it picked December 28, 2024 as date after which iPhone and all different handsets offered within the EU will need to have USB-C.

The thought is to cut back e-waste. When any of the thousands and thousands of iPhone customers within the EU switched to Android, the Lightning cables they used to cost the iOS handset usually ended up within the garbage. With the brand new legislation, their previous telephone and their new one use the identical cables.

Caught within the crosshairs of the EU regulation are the iPhone SE 3 and iPhone 14. Each use Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector, which implies they will’t be offered within the EU beginning on Saturday. Cult of Mac checked, and these handsets have certainly been pulled from Apple’s digital cabinets within the largest European international locations, together with France.

However the laws didn’t wipe out the corporate’s product lineup as a result of, beginning in 2023, the iPhone 15 and new iPhone 16 embrace a USB-C port, not Lightning.

Not solely handsets

The EU legislation requires “all new cellphones, tablets, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld videogame consoles and transportable audio system, e-readers, keyboards, mice, transportable navigation techniques, earbuds and laptops which can be rechargeable through a wired cable, working with an influence supply of as much as 100 Watts, should be outfitted with a USB Sort-C port.”

Which implies that additionally getting the axe within the EU are Apple peripherals that use the Lightning connector, together with the earlier model of the Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse. Apple changed these with USB-C variations a number of months in the past.

An exception is cables. Anybody European who already has a Lightning-based iPhone can nonetheless purchase a charging cable for it, or a USB-A adapter.