There is some discussion about flairs https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1456 but it would be an option to put the country code at the begging of each post and comment to state the nationality if community flairs don't became a thing.
For example as a Spanish i could have started my comment with [ES] or [SP].
Even if we weren't affected directly by this changed, this is the right thing to do, and I think most of that 42k will have your back whatever the outcome.