As I read the EASA comment, they are addressing the Scandinavian authorities, not SAS. The Scandi CAA's grounded the Q400's due to safety concerns after the 3rd accident, and no other CAA followed this, thus being "temporarily out of line with the rest of the 31 EASA member nations."
The critiscism is at authority-level, not directed at SAS, as far as I'm concerned. And EASA would have no business at all interfering with or commenting on SAS' commercial descisions.