Yes; all I was getting at is that even an ICAO ATPL will not give any EU-airspace privileges under current EASA proposals.
I think EASA did that deliberately to screw Europe based N-reg pilots because a lot of them have a CPL/IR (like I have) rather than just a PPL/IR, and doing the FAA CPL is not hard. In fact doing an FAA SE ATPL is not that hard either.
There is a conversion route to EU papers if he has 2000 hours on a Part 25 aircraft which is over 20 tons (or something like that; not my area) although I doubt that will give him SE privileges...