well Hyperveloce,
first, for better or for worse, EASA did not exist two decades ago..it is a fairly recent "invention"..but that's besides the point..
1) The way I understood it, and worldwide the media has not reported correctly on that, it was in fact operators like Air France and others who confronted the manufacturers and demanded a "better" probe for the A330 / A340 family..
the probe upgrade for the A320 was not originally done for the same reasons as was deemed necessary by the operators for the A330/340 family..
so obviously the manufacturers seem to have told the operators that they don't believe the A320 probe upgrade would help with the A330 situations..
(that's why it obviously was not classified mandatory, but sort of optional, like in "nice to have" but not that necessary..)
at least that's the way I understand it from our industry media reports..
2) specs......well you can design a no nonsense old fashioned probe that is glowing like a frying pan, and it would fulfill those specs probably to the point..only problem, as a manufacturer, what do you want to charge for that?? it does not cost that much and the OEMs would not pay that much..
then again, if you design a super - duper space shuttle type probe, that has all kinds of technology in there, it may not be a common sense product, but it would still be up to specs... and guess what, for what that probe is sold for and for what the OEMs are ready to pay for it, you probably could buy a real nice 4 seater private airplane...we are talking big bucks here..
a product with "value added".. so to say...
3) regs.. well I am of the old fashioned variety in that I DO NOT believe that more regs and more mandatory stuff actually will improve a product, nor will it ultimately improve safety..
so maybe I'm wrong, but once you start to make some wild high tech thing out of a pretty basic pitot tube, well, it WILL fail more often, simply because more failure modes are designed into it..
look at an old 737 probe, or from whatever 60's or 70's era plane and look at the new stufff
times are a 'changin..
the only thing that still is fairly predictable and has not changed for a long while, guess a couple of million years by now, ( contrary to what all the climate change folks want you to believe ) IS the weather..
so maybe we should revert back to old "cheap" probes for the same old "expensive" weather..