I see your point and I totally agree with it... I asked here because I find it very difficult to do MRs within Europe and hope that someone knows some tricks... as you mentioned, there are many great deals from another European airports, but I am not happy at all to fly on separate tickets, specially when it involves positioning flights with a LCC and a business class ticket. Unfortunately I dont have enough time to fly longhauls (I already had 2 MRs on longaul flights and have one more for later this year) and I have to rely on earning some miles on intracontinental flights.
Great deals on LH Biz, great connections, but 0 miles. Austrian is the only good option I see. I observe that A3 is not happy to fly me from OTP via ATH to many airports... the only results I get for OTP-ATH-XXX-ATH-OTP (where XXX is an airport in the Central or Western Europe) is when I plan the trip as multicity, so not very successful when I try to get a normal return (multicity gives high prices).