I can confirm that
(a) The EU Council and Parliament agreed in December the final text (COM 579) of the extension of Regulation 1592/2002 to encompass Licensing and Operations (and also ‘third country’ – i.e. non-EU – aircraft).
(b) The draft Implementing Rules and associated Acceptable Means of Compliance are being finalised currently in the various working groups at EASA – in which various experts from the European representative bodies have been active, including myself
(c) The NPAs should be published from March 08 through June 08 and are subject to public consultation which you can take part in
(d) The consultation process, ensuing Comment Response Documents, final EASA Opinion to the Commission etc will take another year or so after that
(e) There will be a transition period for national aviation authorities to determine the transition rules of game for national licences to be converted to EU licences – that is when the matching of national qualifications and training to the EU equivalents will matter
(f) National licences will continue after the transition period only for flying non-EASA (i.e. Annex II) aircraft
(g) Expect transition to start around mid to late 2009.
The GA representative bodies involved in this rule drafting process do communicate developments generally with their constituencies. In the case of Europe Air Sports (which I represent) we send information to our members which are all the National Aero Clubs and the pan-EU air sport federations. These in turn cascade the information through national channels – some more effectively than others probably. IAOPA does a similar comunication through their established channels
In the end EASA creates the (licensing) rules for the Commission to bless and then the member states are responsible for implementing them.
Several of us involved in these working groups have pressed home the point that EASA needs to do a road show of the proposals to get the information to the target audiences. Certainly we expect EASA to hold press briefings, from which information can then be cascaded through the aviation press.