That's apples and oranges. AF business CLASS lounges are for those flying BUSINESS CLASS. They have no CRC type lounge or (paid) membership programme. For that matter CRC members are not supposed to be using BizElite lounges either.

All CRC's in ATL are superior to EVERY AF Business lounge in CDG, plain and simple. The problem experienced by DL PM's has been that AF personnel were not ever letting them into any lounge whatsoever.

I highly doubt that tit for tat had anything to do with this for 3 reasons:

1) They have been doing this since day one of the alliance, even before Skyteam had a name. The AF people on the ground and in many places have still not had it.

2) AF was about four months late in informing their top elites that they had privilages.

3) AF doesn't generally care about service for their own customers, French or otherwise, so I really doubt that they would factor this in.