We do need a central authority,
No, we don't, except for Air Traffic Management, which we had long before EASA was dreamed up.
We had ICAO as a "central authority", and ICAO Members who translated ICAO SARPs into law. That worked beautifully for 50 years, then the EU Commission saw a way to add to its empire and EASA was born.
EASA is simply a huge obstruction to the process of translating ICAO SARPs into law, making it a process that takes years instead of months.
The pinnacle of idiocy was EASA's territory grab into airport regulation, on the pretext, as with everything else, that a "level playing field" had to be created. Why? Because doing so is impossible the regulations (Annex 14 with thousands of pointless words added) had to include that bureaucratic nonsense, the "allowable deficiency" or some such, so that no-one actually had to comply with anything they did not comply with up to that point.
All that the "level playing field" means is that EASA regulations represent the standard attainable by the worst, so that every Member's standards have been reduced to the lowest common denominator. Or rather, they would do were it not for the fact that enforcement standards vary wildly among EASA Member States, something EASA carefully pretends does not happen.
EASA is a farcical bureaucracy, staffed by people unemployable elsewhere, cast-offs from Member States' regulatory authorities. Anyone who has sat through many of its workshops, as I have on different subjects, is only too aware of the appalling standard of knowledge among its staff, to say nothing of the bumbling amateurism and zero presentational skills with which these affairs are run.
Returning to the thread, sort of, EASA's disorganised, incompetent and erratic behaviour over the introduction of Safety Management is a case study in bureaucratic stupidity and vacillation.