I'm running Mac OS X 10.4, and VLC 0.8.1.
VLC successfully detected the subtitles in an OGM file of mine, according to the messages, yet the Visualizations, Audio Device, Audio Track, and Audio Channels of the Audio menu, and the Deinterlace, Postprocessing, Video Device, Video Track, and Subtitle Track options of the Video menu were all disabled, until the "Help" menu was opened (oddly, I didn't discover this reenabled them until I decided to choose the "Bug Report" option... ). Afterwards, the menus are fully active.
Prior to this, the hotkeys still worked without a problem, so odds are, it was just a display error, I never noticed anything of this sort until I've upgraded to Mac OS X 10.4, although admittedly, I didn't have this particular file until after I've upgraded.
I hope this will be fixed in a future update, and good luck with your ridiculous legal problems in Europe!
~ SpacePirate