Hi Fuji,
I don't know the answer - VFR on top was discussed in one of the mags this month (Flyer) but I don't think it addressed whether or how JAA licenses changed things. [I think they haven't, and that we are restricted to "in sight of the surface" at all times if we hold a UK issued JAA PPL.]
But what I'd like to know from anyone who's done it is: how safe/dangerous is it to tyravel VFR on top anyway?
From the perspective of someone without an IMC, the thought of relying on a hole in the clouds for a let-down at the destination is a bit of a worry. I guess you have to be extra careful when assessing the forecast for the destination!
There have been a few horror stories published - I recall several from the US, and a mate of mine based in Connecticut once confessed to me that he had once nearly come to grief this way in his Vari-Eze... the destination wasn't good, so he turned back to land at another point he had overflown some way back, but when he got there it was all under cloud. He descended over a nearby lake - using GPS to fix position - and had to avoid a mast on the lake-shore. It worked out OK, but he fairly sh&t himself, and was a bit close for comfort to the mast when he broke cloud only 1000' or so above the lake, then was able to land at the airport on the shoreline.
So while it sounds like a privelege I would like to have, I wonder how they get on with it in practice e.g. in Northern France?
Andy