James
Doubt it's anything to do with EU regs. I think the uptake of "serious" WW machinery here in the UK was much later than the USA and our tradition in professional shops here was to have spindle moulders rather than shapers (same in the rest of Europe) - now we have an ever-increasing number of low-cost spindle moulders available (e.g. Kity, Scheppach, Elektra Beckum, K-UFO, etc) too at little greater cost than the imported Axminster shaper. The lack of available tooling for the APTC unit is another limiting factor - just compare the available tooling in the USA from the likes of Freeborn or Amana (let alone here) with that available for the router and you'll see what I mean.
Almost all the shaper tooling I've seen is 3-wing solid body stuff which is more expensive to produce that the "universal" blocks on spindle moulders and can be problematical to get through current EU legislation requiring chip limitation. This is now being taken up in the USA as well, so the low-cost shaper cutters may well disappear there as well in due course.
Scrit