Since the Manchester air disaster in 1985, regulation got better and better. The chap who is head of the AAIB has said - and I agree - that the reason everyone survived the Toronto A340 crash was due to the lessons learnt way back then in how we design and configure aircraft.
However, in the past few years there has been pressure to dilute standards. EASA is being battered around by different interests to lower its standards to the lowest common denominator. That may well mean that high standards that exist in, for example, the UK, are dragged down. This is not an anti-European rant. I am all in favour of the EU. But harmonisation should be about harmonising to the highest possible common denominator, not the lowest. EASA is in real danger than its going for the lowest.
What’s more is that EASA has these crazy nationality quotas in how its staff is made up. That may be fine for the European Central Bank, but in EASA you want people from the countries who do safety best in the high up positions, so they can then share their best practise with the whole organisation and the whole of Europe. They need to scrap nationality quotas and hire senior staff based on their knowledge and experience. If they don’t they’ll be just like ICAO.