Having done professional licences both sides of the Atlantic, to me the biggest and most profound difference, in this specific regard, is nothing to do with either EASA or FAA.
In the USA there is a whole business sector supplying often superb, online or computer based teaching and training material, In Europe, we have a choice of books, very worthy, but a lousy way of learning. The fundamental problem with classroom time as an alternative is that it's expensive and time consuming, even if it is often a good way to learn.
I think that if the training industry adapted to that, you'd get a lot less complaints about the difficulty of doing things in Europe. (Albeit that yes, we'd still be justly complaining about too many exams.)
G