As far as I understand it (and I could be wrong) one of the problems with European consolidation has always been that bilateral rights require that the majority of each airline is owned by shareholders from the home nation of the carrier concerned.
If a carrier is majority owned by shareholders outside of the home nation then the right to fly to (for example) the US can be revoked. Does anybody know how Swissair/Sabena were going to get round this difficulty had SR upped their stake to 85% as had been originally envisaged?