A local flying school here has an EV97 in the microlight version with more that 5,000 hours on it, and it still looks as if it were new. On a day with nice weather, it's essentially in the air from dawn to dusk, mainly for training.
My local flying school had a Remos G3/600 and then an FK9 (both microlights). In the Remos it was things like door latches (cf. Cessna door latches...?) and various knobs failing, not the undercarriage or anything major. The FK9 landed nose wheel first one day and broke it. However, it is designed such that it folds back against the lower fuselage in such a case, without damaging the firewall or the engine mount. The propeller was smashed too, but it was a carbon fibre propeller and there is a friction clutch between that and the engine, so no schock-loading. The aircraft was flying again within a week. They now have a Tecnam P92, which to me seems just as solid as a C152, and withstands the rigours of training very well.
I hear that the manufacturer of the C42 has a very good reputation for customer service, spare parts being delivered very, very quickly (in Germany allegedly within 24-48 hours). Now if only they would put the throttle in the proper place....
In Europe, I think it is mainly the costs which are holding back the change to VLA or EASA RTC aircraft, as you can still get at least two C152 for the price of a new aircraft of this type.
As far as the Skycatcher is concerned, another thing which hasn't been mentioned is that it didn't arrive until the US LSA market was firmly in the hands - and partially saturated - by e.g. Flight Design and Remos. Although Cessna intensively tried to make everyone believe that the invented the LSA. I wonder what it would have been like if they had been quicker off the mark?