The source for that article was a single cop in a single country (Spain) making an off-handed comment. The way it’s been spun as a universal concept in Europe by all of the Android blogs is misleading.
Yes. I think that one comment was a flash in the pan about a particular moment in time from an officer involved in a very specific type of drug trafficking prosecutions.
There's a big difference between being the user of something (Pixel/GrapheneOS, though I find these as weird comparisons given) and being an operator of something.
Operating an exit node is by definition you acting in the distribution of such activity (legal or not).