I don’t think it is as simple as the article makes it. The Pope could simply announce we are switching to the Orthodox date. He is not doing that because to do so would be to violate the guideline of Nicea to use the vernal equinox which Catholics have interpreted to mean as close to the physical equinox as possible not a made up one. He is instead asking the Orthodox to agree to one of the proposals that uses the physical vernal equinox using the Jerusalem longitude for the calculation.
That is reassuring and I think too often a lack of clarity adds to the problem. When Pope Francis mentions Paul VI, I think back to VC II and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, December 4, 1963:
APPENDIX A DECLARATION OF THE SECOND ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN ON REVISION OF THE CALENDAR
The Second Ecumenical Sacred Council of the Vatican, recognizing the importance of the wishes expressed by many concerning the assignment of the feast of Easter to a fixed Sunday and concerning an unchanging calendar, having carefully considered the effects which could result from the introduction of a new calendar, declares as follows:
The Sacred Council would not object if the feast of Easter were assigned to a particular Sunday of the Gregorian Calendar, provided that those whom it may concern, especially the brethren who are not in communion with the Apostolic See, give their assent.
The sacred Council likewise declares that it does not oppose efforts designed to introduce a perpetual calendar into civil society.
But among the various systems which are being suggested to stabilize a perpetual calendar and to introduce it into civil life, the Church has no objection only in the case of those systems which retain and safeguard a seven-day week with Sunday, without the introduction of any days outside the week, so that the succession of weeks may be left intact, unless there is question of the most serious reasons. Concerning these the Apostolic See shall judge.
So even a fixed date i.e. "assigned to a particular Sunday" is considered and "if there is question of the most serious reasons" even the seven day week is vulnerable.
Here is a recent report (with misinformation about the timing of Easter and the equinox but) referencing remarks in 2015 by Pope Francis :
Orthodox and Catholics could celebrate Easter on same date after 440 years [
youtu.be]
Pope Francis (as transcribed): "The Catholic Church is open, since the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, to set a fixed date, and to waive the first solstice after the full moon of March." It is of course the equinox and not the "solstice" and it is before the full moon not "after," and it does not have to be in March, it can be in April. It seems a "fixed date" would also appear "to violate the guideline of Nicea to use the vernal equinox which Catholics have interpreted to mean as close to the physical equinox as possible not a made up one." To whom is Pope Francis appealing? It seems not the Orthodox who either insist on the Julian Paschalion or those who, from the 1920s to the present, have made considerable efforts to promote a new application of the "guideline of Nicea."