The directive seems to be oriented towards the waste disposal aspects of batteries and accumulators (not such a bad thing), and having non-removable batteries (or difficult to remove is the devices are sealed) means more chance of the unit being disposed of with batteries and all. There is an allowed exemption for "small" producers, so I guess that's a case by case decision.
Regardless, I think it's a good thing to minimise environmental impact as well as give user the flexibility to have additional batteries that can be changed (although removable and user-changeable are different things, I guess). Having an Acer n10 PDA that is sealed, with a crappy 4-5 hour battery life and losing all installed data from the internal memory of the battery does go, then I support more user flexibility with batteries.
As cumbersome as some of the EU practices can be (I'm from Australia originally, and we have a fairly blasé approach to environmental issues), at least they're trying to be a bit green. Not sure how effective their measures really are in the end, but everyone seems fairly familiar with trying to dispose of things like batteries a little better (lots of collection points, my work has a special disposal program, etc.).
Anyway, just my $0.02 worth...
