The comment you replied to literally said that they can't avoid AV1. Other commentors here have called AV1 an "open standard".

Note that the EU isn't claiming that the standard itself is bad. They're saying the cross-licensing terms are anti-competitive. The cross-licensing may have made sense for major companies like Apple, Google and Meta but it significantly disadvantages smaller companies which may need to rely on their patent arsenal as a deterrent but also face economic pressure to adopt the standard.