I don't think anybody has ever suggested that doing what a mountain qualification allows you to is an exercise in safety--it's quite the opposite IMO, but without it you couldn't take rich people right into the heart of the Alps and Pyrenees for a day of skiing and then back to their homes elsewhere in the continent, neither would the concerned areas benefit from the presence of people with considerable disposable income (private mountain pilots) throughout the year.
You have some odd views. Of course it is about safety, mountain flying is completely different to normal flying and seeing the number of brits who try to take a fully loaded PA28 into a 7000' airport on a 30C day is scary - even scarier I met two airline pilots who were just about to do this.....They had never flown in the mountains before.
Stats of the type above are meaningless. What you need is an accident / fatality rate per X flying hours. There may only be 100 pilots in France, and 20,000 in Englad for example.
The NTSB publish these for the USA and one thing that is clearly shown is that an instrument qualified pilot is far less likely to die due to the weather. This, I assume, also translates back to the IMC rating, so therefore one can assume that there is actually a safety case to keep the IMCr.
But yes, I don't see why the CAA can't just say "up yours" to EASA and allow the IMCr to remain...the French do it all the time....