Very comprehensive and well-founded responses by Flip Flop Flyer, and my hearty concurrence with most he says. However my fear is that "While the EU is very far from being a single country, it is a single market and the rules will be enforced..", whilst being a correct statement technically, may be somewhat vulnerable to politics.
Everybody knows that the open-skies negotiations were put on hold pending the outcome of the US elections - presumably because De Palacio hoped for more reasonable terms from a new US administration. However with yesterday's results, it is likely the US negotiators will be back plying their extremely limited offer(as concerns EU freight haulers) with a vengeance = they've got a renewed mandate. The EU (read EU majors) really wants to get on with dispensation of the nationality clause, and now that it is apparent there will be no new US team to play against, might just decide to cave in on the issue of intra-europe N-reg serviced routes to achieve this. (at least currently sanctioned ones - and worst case, even some new ones - shock - horror).
Since the EU transport ministers handed over negotiating authority to the EC, traffic rights between individual Euro nation-states are no longer negotiated between the US and each individual state.
However, as I've always said, for the EU to receive equal treatment, it has to stand its ground - US carriers are nothing if not extremely competitive - something that the EU has yet to excel in - and insist on a level playing field, or let the US carriers run rampant over them. My fear is that the pent up desire to amalgamate various major EU carriers (AF, KLM, LH, etc...) may override a more sensible and long-term goal of achieving a settlement that serves the European aviation freight industry as well. As always, the pax market is unfortunately likely to dominate the legislative psyche.
Hope not, but...