Of course it is political . We need to get back to the simple concept of every nation having the right to establish a Regulatory Authority that issues it's own licence and sets it's own standards. Nations agreeing on similarity can just issue a validation. Some will not, in a ,sort of, tit for tat but understandable stance. US never gave us Brits an FAA ATR just because we had a UK ATPL. Reasoning was that we did not recognise the FAA ATR as the same standards as the UK. So, there ! Political, actually, not professionally reasonable.
Regulatory Authority Licencing Departments should be peopled by Professional or ex-professional pilots . Let the politicians take over the regulation and you have this mess.