I think it's fair to say there is a general presumption in European aviation that the pilot is dishonest and incapable of flying, and he must (regularly) prove otherwise. Whereas in the USA the default (in this context) is that he is honest and current and he should be left alone unless something happens.
So, while the FAA IR and the JAA IR involves a similar standard of flying at the initial checkride, the JAA IR needs an annual checkride with an examiner, while the FAA one can be self-extended through recency.
Personally I have no problem with paying 30 quid (it must cost the CAA far more than that to type up a letter - if you take that person's annual salary, proportion of office floorspace/rent, etc, and divide it by the # of letters they produce in a year) but it's the principle of putting up barriers to ICAO license/rating holders for no objective reason. Job safeguarding, IMHO.
However, I think the reason why the USA is the "land of aviation freedom" is more due to one factor than any other: several hundred national-level politicians have PPLs and fly their own planes. Over here, we don't have that top level support where it really matters.