Nineiron:
Understand your position but what guys over here don't completely understand is that Europe is not "a country". It is a grouping of sovereign (though daily less so - about which the British press has loads to say) countries. The US is "a country". 4th Freedom & Cabotage conventions only apply between and within "countries", thus the current situation is entirely legal under international law.
Recently however, the EU has started to act more like a "country", having shifted air traffic deal-making authority from the individual member-states' transport ministers to the EC, in line with a European Court decision last November. This will take a year or 2 to take hold and begin to bite, but hopefully - for folks like you and me - will then begin to make a difference job-wise.