Moving to RIPE is not an unalloyed good; Europeans invented bureaucracy, and RIPE pursues it with vigor. And getting the above treatment may require firmly asserting to RIPE that you want it, rather than accepting the defaults. But their motives are more benevolent than ARIN's toward legacy resource holders; RIPE honestly seems to want to gather in legacy resource holders, either as RIPE members or not, without reducing any of the holders' rights or abilities. I commend them for that.
I have to say that my experience transferring to RIPE-NCC was quite pleasant and involved quite minimal bureaucratic hassle. I did have to select “Legacy without contract” on one form and reassert that in reply to one email, but that was about the extent of it. YMMV. Owen