Regarding the authorities "violating" folk for having an out of date chart;
I am sure some people would be quite glad to be "violated"
I can't answer the JAA CPL but the GPS is certainly allowed to a large degree in the FAA PPL and CPL. In fact it is effectively mandatory - because the examiner will expect the candidate to demonstrate operation of all equipment installed in the aircraft. When I did the FAA
PPL in a rented plane with a Garmin 430, I had to get the Garmin 430 sim and learn how to load a route into it.
From a report from someone I know who did the JAA CPL recently, GPS was not used for most or all of it; instead the checkride was a very precise dead reckoning demonstration. Seems totally pointless to me, in any likely CPL usage context.
As regards paper backups, sure, I and most others print out a plog, and have printouts of enroute sections (if not the entire route chart section) and the approach plates for dep, dest and diversions.
I would not rely on totally electronics means for stuff like plates - although I have done flights like that when I got shafted by some Italian airport which would not sell me avgas, etc, and I had to hurriedly replan an IFR route elsewhere, and in that case I didn't have much choice. On long trips I carry a portable printer but having a printing capability
in the aircraft gets a bit silly.
This kind of debate always gets a bit meaningless once one gets away from base. For example I always buy the 1:500k CAA chart and it lives in the plane, to hand. But if flying VFR further away, the chart situation quickly gets quite messy and one ends up carrying only what is likely to be actually required for the route. If IFR, the airways charts (Jepp or Aerad) are practically unusable in the cockpit so different methods are used anyway.