Especially with how things are currently, I whole heartedly agree - you cannot operate as a human being in Europe without having a good standing with either Alphabet or Apple.

Absolute madness.

Absolute madness or complete nonsense - I have neither an Apple account or device, nor a Google account or mandated device (e/os on Fairphone 3+) and operate perfectly successfully in the UK with (almost [1.]) zero friction.

1. Revolut app stopped working so I emptied my account and opened a Wise account which is fully administer-able from their website. Revolut has subsequently started working again after a couple of app/OS updates.