Disclaimer: This is my experience from many short travels to EU countries and having a lot of friends due to job network (my work promotes a lot of friendly work connections from many EU countries. As a whole, we work hard, we play hard).
Europe has a philosophy of "feeling peaceful". Police, intelligence, surveillance, etc. is not done openly, on your face. Instead it flows just beneath the surface.
There are a lot of civilian officers around and police officers are not very visible. Same for borders and higher security places like airports.
If there's something suspicious happening, the concentration is increased invisibly. If something really happens, the area is silently surrounded like a python death hugs its prey, and it's over.
This is possible with intelligence and surveillance, communications sniffing, etc. If you increase encryption, there's a risk of blinding security services. You may need more overt operations are much more manpower to keep tabs on everything.
I'm an encryption proponent. I support it with all my being. Also, I'm aware that being able to see everything can and is being abused.
However, I need to be a realist here: We're addressing the wrong problem here. Is encryption required? Undebatably yes. Do everyone has a right to privacy? Undebatably yes. Do we want to be secure and need security services? Possibly yes.
So, we need to solve the problem of security with the presence of encryption. I.E. Security in a past-encryption era. The no-encryption ship has sailed. Trying to bring it back with the force of law is a last ditch effort. We need another solution to allow security services to their job with the presence of encryption, and without weakening it.
I do not accept someone can just read my office messages or conversations with my family just because somebody may be trying to make a bomb or planning an uprising.