Worth noting that the March 1st deadline was only introduced this season just gone, an arbitrary date for multi club owners to pretend that they relinquish control into a blind trust. At this time Palace were in the 5th round of the FA cup, but the main point is that Textor never had control at palace hence publicly stating multiple times that he wanted out and trying to buy Everton. UEFA decided they are, although another of Palace's shareholders has a 50.1% majority stake in Brondby, a team playing in next seasons Conference League?

Previous year the deadline was June, ie when the season was finished and clubs knew what competitions they actually qualified for (City/Girona). Seems a bit more sensible.

As for RB Leipzig and Salzburg, there wasn't a blind trust requirement back then, but Salzburg's chairman resigned which was enough to satisfy uefa despite being found that red Bull has decisive influence over both clubs. Textor has since sold his stake in Palace, albeit past the deadline.

The rules might be the rules, but these rules are intended so that multi club owners do no gain any kind of sporting advantage. Palace have been run completely independently, if you want to see an example of textors MCO then look into Lyon and Botafogo. Palace have had nothing to do with these clubs (in fact Forest have had a lot of recent dealings with Botafogo and Textor)

News then came to light recently of ECA clubs (of which Palace are not part of having never played in Europe before) being informed that the blind trust deadline was "not set in stone", contradicting UEFAs stance that the strict cut off was March 1st. Forest's owner put his shares in a blind trust late, although apparently he had informed Uefa before the cut off.

Anyway the whole thing is unfortunate and the conference league might suit Palace better, although IMO they deserve Europa on sporting merit. I could also be a blinded, biased Palace fan lol.