Well Microsoft did not publicly commit to using the same APIs, and no privileged access, for its own antivirus products. That's why the EU said no way; not because kernel access was revoked.
Yes, but then of course Microsoft is being obligated to open part of kernelspace to competitors, which is arguably "OK" from a competitive regulation perspective, but that then places a special burden on competitors to maintain code hygiene given the potential for crashes. It makes CrowdStrike's negligence all the more unacceptable.
I believe what philistine is suggesting is that Microsoft could have implemented their own security offering using a safer alternative like eBPF, and then opened that interface to competitors as well.
I think that would have been a proactive approach. That said, I'm not entirely convinced that the EU was right to place the restriction in the first place.