Originally Posted by
Mustapha Cuppa
ICAO only "recognises" individual member states, not groupings of member states. And whilst your licence is issued in accordance with Part-FCL, it is, nevertheless, issued by the authorities of individual member states, not EASA.
Hence the need to stop issuing individual member state licenses and issue 1 common EASA license by EASA in Köln and not individual member states. The only reason this is still done is because a bunch of petty bureaucrats in individual EASA countries still think saving their job is more important than serving thousands of pilots for who the whole organization actually is made. But as with most things in EASA, we are there to help them with their jobs and they are not there to help us with our jobs.