As part of our maintenance release document, any MEL ‘snag’ as you term it (we call them hits) is printed. We started carrying the complete MEL a few years ago. It is helpful to expand knowledge of an enroute maintenance issue but not controlling until the next release.
When you say “uncontrolled” if it is part of the flight release paperwork as noted in your flight operations manual, I don’t see how any regulatory agency could make an issue of that. If a foreign inspector would take issue with that, your company would have to address that in your operations manual.
For example many years ago, German ramp inspectors demanded to see a liability certificate of insurance. We now have in our operations manual a copy of a liability certificate of insurance.