There is no such requirement. You seem to be conflating a verification email address with the recovery one. The verification email address is sometimes required

There is no such requirement. You seem to be conflating a verification email address with the recovery one. The verification email address is sometimes required upon signup, but is not tied to the particular account, and also hashed so we don't have access to it: https://proton.me/support/human-verification https://proton.me/support/human-verification. Therefore, we cannot share it with any third-parties (authorities included). Recovery address (which is what this case is about), on the other hand, is completely optional, and it's not the only option we offer for account recovery: https://proton.me/support/set-account-recovery-methods https://proton.me/support/set-account-recovery-methods. Also, it is removed from our systems as soon as you remove it from your account.