Some countries have done their homework and some have not. In Mexico the union established a program that would allow pilots to test their language proficiency years ahead of the deadline and gave the airlines the anonymised results so they had an inkling of what lay ahead of them.
Other countries such as Austria (and Germany?) have done close to nothing and now clamour for extensions. In Austria we don't even have a licensed testing facility because our CAA hasn't given out any licenses yet. Under pressure from well organized general aviation lobbies they now propose to hand out at least level 4 to almost everyone in posession of a PPL or higher.
The 3 year extension to 2011 is sad because the whole program has been around for a good number of years but some CAAs chose to ignore it.
Even if most Austrian/German/Scandinavian pilots don't really need the program as they usually know enough English from school to understand communication beyond phraseology, a dabbling Germany will be a good excuse for Ukraine/Russia/etc. to grant similar "grandfather rights" to their pilots and controllers.
The current German/Austrian RTF licenses only test knowledge of phraseology. You could theoretically pass them without actually speaking English if you only memorize all the RTF wording.
Language Proficiency goes beyond that as it tests the ability to understand plain language, something that might be handy if you want to tell Krasnodar Approach what kind of dangerous goods you have on board or what kind of distress you're in. (And I assume that things go far worse than that outside my area of operations.)
To all those subjects of the Queen flaming against such tests or asking for self-certification: enjoy the world's favor for your language and play by the same rules as anyone else. Given your immigration rates being a subject of the queen doesn't prove anything about your language abilities and so authorities should test your knowledge even if your last name is listed in the Domesday book.
(Please forgive any mistakes, I have not been tested yet.)