Hey, original talk speaker here. I agree with this sentiment, we are very geared for high-quality, high-spec industrial designs in Europe.

CE for simple consumer products is actually not so pricy, and things are moving very quickly there in the right direction. We work with Smander.com for compliance, but there are others who offer it for cheap. The more expensive measurements are EMI, but in Germany universities will let you use their chamber at low cost or even for free if you are a small business or single person.

Honestly the problem with CE is misinformation most of all. It does not need to be complicated: Cheap standards can be bought from evs.ee for 30€, a couple of hours of a CE consultant cost is only a couple hundred, getting close to a university costs only time...

The goals of the EU is also to simplify these regulations, and things are also moving very fast there.