Well Cathar, I hope they pay YOU very well, as
PR co-ordinator for EASA
For what he is doing, Cathar is paid very well by EASA. He is not a
PR coordinator (
AFAIK he doesn't work in EASA's communications and external relations department), but has been lying on a number of occasions to the interested GA public about the Basic Regulation (drafting) and its likely implications and further implementations. As such, he is
very ill-positioned to answer your question.
At Paygrade 14, he makes about € 14000 + expat allowance + benefits a month, all minimally taxed.
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Coming back to 4x4's original query, I find it hard to believe that you, if you are in employment, the new implementation of part FCL would actually have legal precedence over your current employment and the article 15 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. Surely your legal council should be able to tell you who to sue should you lose employment over it.
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A few people obviously have some axes to grind in this forum. Examiners like bose-x (?) and billliebob (?) have a clear pecuniary interest in gold plating the FCL scene, with as many pointless recurrent flight tests as possible. Even if a logical natural conversion / grandfathering process form FAA papers to EASA papers were introduced, they would make a killing.
The same goes for Flight Training Organisations, that count on many useless but expensive conversions. In view of the many UK FTO's involved in the foul lobbying process over the last couple of years, I would advise anyone interested in EASA flight training to go abroad (Spain, Portugal and Greece spring to mind).
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Normally any reasonable person would be pro a simple straightforward uniform European regulatory environment in aviation. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't exist, because Member States keep clinging towards their own little quircks and exceptions in countless different subdomains.
If you cannot agree on a single European airspace, you shouldn't have a € 100+ Million annual budget organisation like EASA producing one incomprehensable and silly rule after the other. As such you are crippling and in the end you're just destroying an entire industry.
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EASA comitology is a perfect example of the current democratic deficit in Europe. You have an organisation without much oversight and accountability that can sprout rules like a bad case of writer's diarrhea. The production process of these rules lacks any kind of transparency and every now and again, rules are produced that go well beyond EASA's mandate. In addition, EASA and the Commission make a mockery of their own so called "Code of Good Administrative Behaviour", leaving the general public in the cold.
Oversight by the Commission comes in the form of blackmail by a bunch of frustrated and I dare say incompetent Aviation Safety "experts" like Eckard Seebohm. EASA is forced to do what they say, because the Commission can virtually eliminate large chunks of EASA's budget with a few keystrokes.
Oversight by the European Parliament is only there in theory. The Commission is also in a position to blackmail them, because the Commission has the sole prerogative to propose legislation. The average member of the Transport Committee in the EP doesn't really understand the issues or wants to press other issues. I found out that Brian Simpson folded partly because the Commission threatened to thwart some of his Rail-related ideas, so go figure.
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I find it a pity that so much of this mess is driven by "hating America"*. The rantings of clvrdr, which show a clear lack of understanding of the N-reg scene, are the latest painful example. People are not N-reg because they want to dodge taxes, but because they want a straightforward training scene, a straightforward maintenance process and pay fees commensurate with services rendered.
*Sure, there are quite of few topics where the behaviour of our starred and striped friends has been anything but exemplary, but I do have the impression that they understand what aviation is all about. If I were to design a rulebook for Europe, I would take a good look at what title 14 CFR has on offer, throw away
their protectionist nonsense, focus on the safety related bits that have a history and use that as a basis for a pan-european aviation legislation. But that would be under the assumption that the European Member States actually
want a uniform and clear and straighforward aviation rulebook.