I remain convinced that the EU needs an independent regulatory system, because the FAA has the dual mission of both regulation and promotion of US aviation interests. To allow the FAA to dictate regulation globally would be akin to allowing the Yankees to write the MLB rulebook
Yet, that argument is totally spurious because the
fact is that the FAA does not abuse the system.
The FAA provides US-taxpayer-subsidised "more or less everything"... pilot licensing, aircraft and equipment certification, certification of modifications, you name it.
Nearly all of it is totally free. I have just got an FAA FSDO to approve a custom AFMS for my GPS, allowing me to fly GPS approaches. (The aircraft was always OK; it was just a paperwork exercise, which 3 or 4 UK avionics shops failed to achieve in past years). Cost to me? Zilch. Well, I had to pay the UPS document return cost because a got a friend out there to present it on my behalf. Before that, I got a fairly nontrivial
EHSI installation approved, also free. In EASA-land, that would have been into 4 digits, as a starting point. With certain negatives (hassle, in essence, unless you have "contacts" out there) this great system is accessible to FAA pilots worldwide.
If you were to call that "promotion of US aviation interests" then please can I have some more! Let's shut down EASA while we are at it; it doesn't do anything useful, despite pretending to preserve "safety" in this little corner of the globe.
Instead, EASA abuses the ICAO licensing/certification system. It is staffed by people who ostensibly do their best, and this may be true for the most part at the individual level where I dare say they believe in their mission, but the organisation as a whole is set up to deliver a gold plated system which is for the most part not based on safety data or any other evidence, and is particularly set up to channel business to a small number of EASA Part 21 approved companies, who are able to make nice money out of certification, and out of developing EASA STCs which are their "intellectual property" even though they are almost totally based on stuff immediately found in the FAA approved installation manuals...
EASA also runs some heavily and completely unashamedly politically motivated agendas... discussed here already.