This seems like a distinction without a difference. The EU gets to choose their rules and Meta gets to make business decisions about how to comply with those rules. One can complain about either, I suppose.

I don’t know how the cost-benefit analysis happened within Meta when considering approaches but presumably they would rather be getting paid to show more ads rather than not being paid. Their policies may also change over time as they invest more in their systems or if the rules change.

Ultimately it seems to me like the real problem was that the advertiser in this case was quite tiny and the representative they spoke to perhaps didn’t do a great job of explaining the issue (and the customer was too insignificant to justify a more high-touch approach). Presumably if you’re paying a lot more for advertising you can get better treatment and perhaps Meta would also appropriately label political ads if you were wanting to spend a lot on them.

Can you quote your sources? The article doesn't mention anything about the regulation you're stating as a fact.