Google showing a (strange) “Find results on [competitor]” box in top spot (EU)

When setting France as a location, Google now shows a box taking you straight to its competitors for your query, above ads and above Google My Business answers. Here is an example for a hotel search in Dubai: https://imgur.com/a/P2jF58n

This appears to be f*cking up a lot of SEO/SEA strategies that focused on not relying on other actors than Google, e.g. in France, the "Yellow Pages" website now has a free top spot for lots of queries, whereas most people ceased investing in it long ago, not least because it was not relevant against Google My Business/Google Maps.

I wonder how much of it comes from the application of EU rulings.

What do you think?