The European situation is going to get much worse when EASA rules apply to heles, starting next year, and replaces the way that the CAA selectively operated under JAA, or even before JAA.
One of the redeeming features of the UK CAA system was that, in the end, a CAA Flight Ops Inspector or Surveyor or a bod in the Belgrano could give an exemption. And exemptions was the way that lots of things got done. [It would have been simpler not to have such restrictive rules, but once you have the exemption you were hot to trot]. Since EASA are now auditing the national authorities' performance against the EASA rulebook, exemptions are more or less impossible.