Sounds like complete nonsense to me, another made up story.
It is not all that surprising to me, STB.
0 to ATPL being the norm outside of the US and becoming more common. Airbus was highly astute in recognizing the early majority of their customers seeking airline fleet modernity would be employing those who do not come from a pool of clasically trained pilots and of which English may not be their native language. Their ingenious FBW system was to mitigate much of the risk in that endeavour and for the most part has done a fairly good job, considering.