"There is a tendency that the IMC rating will become a get out of jail card"
Not that one again, please
A pilot with an IMCR who has not flown for a year is going to be as useless as a pilot with an IR who has not flown for a year.
3 things that matter:
currency on type
currency on type
currency on type
Now, how many of each sort are there hanging around airfields?
Most PPLs don't fly anywhere really (most chuck it in pretty fast). I therefore suspect most IMCRs are well out of currency, too. One big reason is that one cannot at all easily rent a plane that's legal for IFR in CAS, never mind one that someone with a brain would want to fly in IMC.
The vast majority of IRs are also either lapsed or their currency is zero. Most are in the hands of ATPL hour builder instructors who did the IR by banging a Seneca around for a while, plus sim sessions, passed the ATPL exams and, when they are not thumbing through airline job ads, are trying to hour build by flying in perfect VFR between the four creases in their chart next to a student.
There is a tiny group of noncommercial IRs flying around Europe. Practically all of them are owners, and they will generally be current (most owners are current especially those who can fly IFR).
There is a much bigger group of G-reg owners who don't have an IR but have the IMCR. Most owners of something reasonable will have a job/business and cannot possibly do the JAA IR.
I reckon if you picked 100 pilots who have just arrived on some IAP, and stripped out the commercial ones, you would find the good IMCR pilots vastly outnumber the good IR pilots.
An IMCR pilot who had a half decent instructor can fly everything in the IR flying syllabus, except SIDs and STARs and those are easy. The reality of Class A is nearly all RNAV i.e. a BRNAV GPS.