It's not even political in any operational sense.
IFR GA has never been an operational issue in Europe, because
- ATC nearly always give jets traffic total priority on getting airborne, even if it means keeping light GA at the hold for an hour
- the lower airways in Europe are practically devoid of traffic (easy to do a 700nm leg without getting visual with another plane, of any kind, within a few k feet in altitude)
- the Eurocontrol routings keep lower airways traffic well away from terminal areas
- ATC keep it well away from other traffic in terminal areas, which is not hard because the climb and descent performance of the two is very different
- it goes mostly to different airports, because the big ones have set up "mandatory handling" cartels with silly pricing
- there is very little of it, due to poor utility value of GA in Europe
The politics are to do with professional pilot status (tied to the IR, instead of being tied to the ATPL like it is in the USA), FTO profits (or lack of them, presently), and stuff like that.
Last edited by IO540; 9th Nov 2011 at 14:04.