The company I work for is begrudgingly moving to IE8 starting a couple weeks from now. The only reason they are moving to it is because they are also starting to role out Windows 7, and IE6 isn't available for Windows 7.

Therefore they have had no choice but to go through all of the internal sites and fix the numerous ones that only support IE6. Which was the only thing holding them back from pushing IE7/8 onto the XP machines. The good side effect of this is that for the most part all of the internal sites that have been upgraded to support IE8 also support Firefox now.

You are missing one important fact. The usage stats you quoted are only for visitors to w3cshools.com. At the bottom of the page they even admit that the actual market share for IE is close to 80%.

That said, I agree with your main points about the EU being completely ridiculous.