SkyGuy,
Your not right old chap. My understanding (and I'll qualify it as that as the goal posts are not set in stone) is that it's actualy better under JAR than before. Your exams WILL be JAR credited, and because of the extra requirement of 500 hours multi crew, the frozen part of your ATPL is valid for SEVEN years. The only catch is that it's seven years from your last IR renewal, so you must have the IR, but in their defence, it's a rolling seven years, ie you get another seven years each time you renew your IR.
xabi200,
The rest of what I overheard is not really relevant to this topic. But, the French attitude to not accepting 'others' JAR issued licences, is really just about their protectionism and union pressures to stop non French from working in France. RVR800 will no doubt chip in with his view on this. Personaly, I think it sucks for JAR and they should not be allowed o get away with it.
An someone said to me, how many non French do you know working in France? Ask the same question over here, and you have two answers as far away from each other as you could get.
PS