In Europe Ops departments are required under JAR to provide Flight watch and to exercise operational control. However, that’s about it, most of what is conducted by Ops teams in Europe is more flight management, ATC slot control and basic weather and Notam watch.
But the European systems aren’t geared up for your Ops department to give you much more than that. Weather Radar feed is only available commercially for the UK and Pyrenees. Much of the weather data available to US dispatchers is not available, oh and half the time we can’t accurately see where you are because ATC information isn’t available in the public domain. For our deliveries we know exactly where one of our Boeing’s is from lift off out of Seattle to landing in London, but, on it’s first commercial flight we will lose it somewhere just south of the English channel because ATC providers don’t want us to know what they’re doing with our aircraft, so its best guess from the Computer Flight plan and takeoff time.
I have to agree with Doc C that most of this is because pilots in Europe see joint responsibility as an erosion of their status. However, we are a professional group of people with something useful to contribute to the safe conduct of the flight.