EASA........... Following the part M fiasco Another fine mess.
EASA is at the very heart of this problem, when the EU decided on a pan European aviation authority it started talking to the industry and the big flight schools sent representatives to to push for highly regulated pilot training courses all done at ( their) pilot sausage factory's, unfortunately the small schools did not have the recorces to lobby EASA and so as always with the EU this highly regulated system was adopted.
Having tied up the supply chain the big schools then pushed the airlines into recruting only students from the big schools using quality of training as the reason, this was a good way of hiding the money that must be changing hands between the schools and the airlines.
In the old days you could do the fATPL just by having flown 700 hours, passing the ground exams and the flight tests. In practice most people did 150 hours and then an instructor rating to be able to get an instructor job to get the rest of the flying hours.
Once the fATPL was issued airline job hunting would start and when you got a job you got bonded for the cost of the type rating........ The type rating cost you NO money but you had to stay with the airline for about two years.
The result of the system was that the unsuitable people fell by the wayside and those who did not had a very good basic flying skills.
The EASA system seems to be training pilots with a lack of basic skills who have been flying perfectly servisable aircraft into the ground.
Conclusion...... EASA = backward progress in flight safety and greater cost to achive this.
As a bi-product they have also blocked any social mobility by pricing flying training out of the reach of those with talent but modest income.