Hi Bus, how're you doing these days?
I do agree that licenses doesn't necessarily equate directly to safety. Human factors affect everyone, licensed or not and human factors are the ultimate determinant of safety - reliability too, although the two are often confused.
Having not bothered to renew any of mine, I'm no longer licensed, but I could still be relied upon to safely accomplish many aircraft maintenance tasks if necessary - and to know where the limits of my ability lie. The danger in eliminating licenses is that it opens the door to people who are not steeped in our aircraft maintenance safety culture to perform work on aircraft. Questions that immediately spring to mind are: How are we to ascertain competence? Why haven't they got a license? What basic training have they had? The reason ICAO insists that signatory states - and only signatory states - issue licenses to certify aircraft maintenance is to ensure that certifiers demonstrate knowledge and competence. That is what licenses are all about and doing away with state licensing removes that assurance. Can you imagine the EC ordering EU member states to do away with driving licenses and hand control of driver competence to the driving schools?
ICAO deals with individual signatory states. The EU is not a state, the EC is a legislative body but it has no sovereignty and EASA is using powers granted under one international treaty to oblige sovereign states to abrogate terms of another international treaty that they have ratified. If this is in the interests of safety then I'm a Dutchman's uncle. EASA's case seems very flimsy to the most casual glance and it is certainly possible to challenge their position under international law. What we need is an interested party with the will and the funds to take the matter to court.