Oh I absolutely agree that they should have had a citation for that. I'm just summarising the article. It was a common political tactic: blame the EU for unpopular policies, but don't give them credit for the popular ones. It's may be part of the reason why UK voters were so easily convinced to vote for Brexit. I've seen the same tactics here in Ireland.
I have no doubt that you could find some EU legislation from the '90s that could have been a tiny factor in this debacle, but it's fairly obvious that the biggest factor was panic that ICL would collapse if they didn't continue propping them up with fresh money, leaving many government IT systems out of support.
Citation needed.