As far as obtaining a license goes, is the testing standardized through all member countries? If not… well, isn’t that a bit screwy?
Well, it isn’t completely standardized, as not every country has identical laws, but it’s more standardized than I found it to be in the US.
EU members have examined each other’s driving tests and found them to be acceptable throughout the area. Think of it as something similar to school acreditation: two schools which are acredited by the same board for the same subjects can teach and test them differently, yet the diplomas from both schools are considered equivalent.
Not standardised to any great extent as far as I know. Not any more screwy than the fact that pretty much anyone with a foreign licence can drive about on the roads of pretty much any country (such as the US) for up to one year in a perfectly legal fashion.
There was an EU directive introducing a single driving license in member states, which was published in December 2006. There’s a news story here and a brief search makes me think that this might be the directive involved. The text of the directive does talk about standardising testing and examiners and their training. Implementation seems to be planned 2009-2013.
So the short answer seems to be: ‘it’s on its way’. Not sure why it should seem a bit screwy that separate sovereign nations should have separate licensing requirements though. 
Testing isn’t even standardized between US states. That’s screwy.
FWIW, my brother has taken the driving test in the UK, Sweden and Portugal and says the Swedish one is more or less the same as the UK one, except with a bit about driving in adverse weather, and the Portuguese one was, “Go. Stop. Reverse over there. Have a nice day.”
In Spain getting a driver’s license is incredibly expensive and complicated and time consuming. It is utterly ridiculous but it is based on a strong lobby of driving schools (you HAVE to go through them) and a love of the Spanish people for bureaucracy which is only equaled in China. It used to be that you could exchange your American license for a Spanish one but no longer.
sailor, google for “Pennsylvania DOT” and read their requirements for “foreigners not from Germany or France.” Scary and idiotic are two words that came to mind when I ran into those, years ago. This was in 2002: a foreign national not from Germany or France had to take 80h of driving lessons, even if (s)he already had a US license or an international license. It may have been updated since, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s been rationalized.
Sadly, Spain doesn’t have anywhere near the worst bureaucratic requirements out there. I suspect the word bureaucracy may have been a french-Swiss invention and not a french-French one… why couldn’t those guys stick to Toblerone?