However there is another angle on all this: the French IR was clearly designed to lead the way to being a lot more than a French-airspace-only job. I am hearing more and more stuff on other countries adopting it, and if that happens, the EASA stuff will effectively get bypassed.
Will it?
Fact of the matter is that EASA has spoken the final verdict on how to stop foreign licenses in Europe. What France is doing (and I am all for it, no mistake) is illegal according to EASA. So EASA will, if they want Part FCL to have any significance, have to take France to court to prohibit them keeping national licenses active past April 8, 2012.
Actually, I do hope EASA will do it so we get a court decision on this. It might, if France wins, spell the end of EASA as a whole.
Democracy? We lost that when we handed power to Brussels.
Fact is that most European governments are no longer interested in true democracy, most have never been. If you look at the history of European politics, how many of the formerly independent European states have ever been true democracies? Not one of the current EU members. Some have frighteningly totalitarian histories, including and foremost the one which houses EASA's headquarters. True democracy? Forget it. You can't loose what you never had.
However, if the European aviation community has not yet understood what is happening and start to fight back in this war of extermination, there will be hell to pay in the near future. FAA licences is only the beginning.