Northbeach
You are so right. That's why I left JAA land for FAA land a long time ago. Everybody gets his/her chance in the U.S. Those who work hard will make it.
In Europe, it seems as they do everything to try to stop you from dreaming of being a pilot, from the 6 hour grueling and ridiculously expensive medical (500€) where they try to find any details of superficial health conditions, to the training itself, not far from 80,000€. Not counting the fact that you will have to fork out an extra 20-30,000€ for a type rating, and why not double that for line training, since you need those 500h on type minimum to submit your application for an F.O. position. They will have you sit in a class from 9 to 5 for six months up to year doing nothing but ground school, and learning irrelevant facts that you will never comme accross again in your life as a pilot. Once you get past that, you will pay anywhere up to 100€ as fee for each of your 14 exams. I know in France most schools charge you 11000€ just for that ground course!!!!The flight test fees are around 800€, and you will need to spend an additionnal 4000€ a year to keep current. Nothing like the FAA and licences for life with just that biannual review. One the things I find crazy and ridiculous, is that a JAA pilot who flies as an expat will have his IR lapse and will need to retake the test after a certain number of years of not flying in JAA land, even though the whole time he has been employed and flying big jets in Asia, Africa, Australia, or America.
Maybe because of all the bullcrap EU pilots go through, the JAA believes they have the "best licence" and any flying from anywhere else doesn't count whether it be 50 or 5000h(if it did, you'd just have to pass an Air Law exam like most ICAO ATPL's to get your conversion, not go through the whole process like a beginner) For all these reasons, I see no interest in getting a European licence, especially as there are no jobs in Europe anyway!
But some smart guys are still willing to spend 100,000€ to say "i'm a pilot" and come here on this forum crying about why they can't get a RHS and where can they buy some time as a passenger acting as an F.O. in some third world country for some SOP-less operator which happens to be on EU and FAA blacklist. And worse, they actually still dream of coming back to EASA land after that and fly for a major with all the bad habits gained (no, not all hours are worth the same) while having used their parent's house to secure a loan they are struggling to repay while being paid peanuts. If they even get paid at all.So sad.