Shades of the engineers' licensing debacle.
Once the EC became involved we got the JAA, then the Part 66 licence that made hoary old LAMEs go away and swot for yet more exams and modules in order to carry on doing exactly what we had been doing for decades. Meanwhile, over in France, where there previously hadn't been any AME licences at all, the French authorities adopted the new rules by simply giving Part 66 licences to those who could prove they had been working on aeroplanes for some time. There's more than one EU, we're just living in the wrong part.
