If you scroll to the very bottom of https://protonmail.com, you'll find that "This project is supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program".

I'm not sure whether Swiss companies can apply to this grant, but it does seem like ProtonMail have some sort of relationship with the EU.

Correct. But all it needs is for one company that is (or has offices in) the EU to to set a precedent.

The US is also making rumblings and I had high hopes when I started reading the senate report [2]that began

"Nearly a century ago, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” Those words speak to us with great urgency today."

However the conclusions (page 375 for the impatient) left me underwhelmed although their comparison to the early heydays of the railroad empire made me chuckle.

[2] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7222836/Investiga...