RIPE is the European equivalent of ARIN (the North American regional authority of ISP addressing matters). They are sort of like the postal/zoning agents of the internet in that they oversee the distribution and management of IP address blocks. ISPs like Orange Spain have a RIPE account that they use manage their IP allocations, which is what was compromised.
The RIRs are delegated the numbers from IANA, and they in turn delegate numbers to LIRs, Local Internet Registries, such as an ISP or a maybe a large organisation which has vertically incorporated that functionality.
The RIRs represent, and are paid for by, the LIRs in their region and so to some extent they reflect local consensus, local culture, etc. This means in some sense RIPE's security policies reflect what European ISPs and similar wanted, for good or ill.
Traditional routing has always been very, very open. Like a club where anyone is welcome and if new folks mess stuff up it just gets fixed.
Several IRRs used to allow RPSL changes by email to their systems with only maintainer auth and no verification of route ownership (e.g. you register with the IRR, then publish Google routes).
It’s all getting hardened nowadays with things like no more email, layers of verification, RPKI, etc.
It’s not necessarily what folks want but how this stuff had traditionally been handled. Thankfully it’s all changing because of events like this.