The most interesting comment above is that the high cost of GA in Europe leads to pilots reaching the right seat of an airliner with the minimum of hand flying skills.
I find this ironic that in the UK it is percived that we have the highest standards of pilot training we now have "Airline preperation programs" run by the big training companys ( Oxford, Cabair etc) that reject pilots who have done some GA flying.
Yes these companys will take the £20,000 that it will take these modular students to get a CPL/IR but even if they are very good will not help them to get a job, however pay £60,000 for the modular course that takes the student from zero flight time to the CPL/IR and the training companys will recomend these people to airlines.
I have seen APP students fail flight tests and then get recomended to airlines when modular students from the same company don't get an airline recomendation even when they pass all the tests first time!.
This skill errosion will only get worse with the CAA review of charges , this British airways driven idea is to try and get the CAA charges down and transfer them to the GA sector.
This will only have the effect of further driving up the cost of GA flying, eventualy BA and the rest of the airline industry will pay the price for this "short term thinking" but by then the bean counters responsable will have moved on to mis-manage another industry with short term policys.