> Why was it relevant that these operators must specifically be in the EU

The integration is only possible because the EU forced Meta's hand. The law only applies to massive digital empires with gatekeeper levels of control.

I don't think the EU would mind at all if Meta would permit American companies to interoperate with them. Meta won't just permit it, they have to protect their WhatsApp Business money machine of course.

That's also why the feature is only available to EU numbers. Not because BirdyChat hates Australians, but because WhatsApp won't permit them to send messages to numbers from those countries.