I hate to react on newspaper accounts, even if Der\Spiegel is a rather " serious" magazine but the article is probably based on second hand info as I doubt they interviewed the crew directly,and even if they did ,I doubt the magazine has someone who knows enought about the system to write something coherent.
As long as we do not have more details such as : exact Altitude at which this happenned, ( to determine which CAS logic applied ) total vertical manoevre of the 747 and eventual coorinated Ra of the A320 ( to exclude crossing RAs), what was the original ATC clearance to both aircraft , etc.. it will be difficult to discuss the case in a rational way.