but they have most certainly failed to wake up the legislators in Brussels and that should have been their task, full stop
No one is up to that task. You need to understand how governments work. Most legislation is secondary, i.e. regulations drafted by ministers, government departments, organisations like EASA. Most has to go before parliament but is subject to a negative resolution procedure, which means that it becomes law unless parliament votes against it. The parliament has no power to amend: it can either let it through or block it completely. The UK and European parliaments are much the same in this respect.
Politicians are for the most part not interested in the detail of legislation. They could not care less unless it affects their ability to pursue their own political agendas and to get re-elected, these two things being closely connected. Politicians become interested when their hold on power is weakened by events around them. So, a large migration of companies out of the EU, with consequent job losses due to a piece of legislation, would cause them to wake up. France might actually take an interest if EADS Socata told their govenrment that the sale of their flagship aircraft would be adversely affected by the proposals regarding N reg in PART FCL. They would be even more concerned if they thought that this might give the US an economic advantage. Politicians facing business closures and job losses in their constituencies will alway wake up. Subject to this though, the removal of the ability of EU residents to fly N reg is not even on their radar.
Fundamentally though there is a difference in ethos between the bulk of europe and the Anglo Saxon countries. In europe, the rule is that things are only permitted to the extent that regulations say they are. In the UK things are allowed unless they are specifically prohibited. European politicians see their god given role as being the generation of more rules to regulate the public's lives and generally the response to failed rules is not to remove them but to create even more rules. In general the public support this since regulation removes from them the responsibility for their own actions. That is why there are riots in France when the government tries to raise the state retirement age to 62! In Europe for years the legal professions have been concerned at the inroads made by large UK and US law firms, which have fewer restrictions on the way that they practice and which have increased their market share in international company, corporate and transactional busines. The European response is not to remove rules on their national professions so that they can compete but to try and restrict the competition.
It is easy to see why the aviation community feels singled out, but in fact this process is the result of a democratic deficit which affects the whole of Europe and everything it does. The reality is that the rule making process of people like EASA and the Commission is very difficult to stop or even control because the structures are just not there. Remember, the parliament contains politicians who still think it is important to legislate on the shape of a banana
