For close followers of The Crooked Agency, nothing terribly unexpected in there.
It's worth noting that the IR still requires the audiogram in each ear separately on the initial medical, despite me having been told by Eric Sivel (EASA's then head of rulemaking) that the initial v. renewal dictinction will be ended by EASA.
This ridiculously gold plated and arbitrary piece of initial medical crap stops quite a lot of older people doing the European IR.
This is the normal pattern of EASA behaviour: tell different things to different people.