Despite what you may think, there isn't some nefarious conspiracy keeping tech salaries low in Europe. It's that this is where the market is, an equilibrium between supply and demand for engineers.

It's precisely the same reason that salaries in certain US markets are so high: FAANG don't pay high salaries because they have fundamentally decided that engineers should be paid X amount, nor because someone has read Marx and wants to give engineers more of the value they create. It's because demand has exceeded supply for engineers in those markets, and that has driven up the equilibrium price. I should also point out that the median salary for engineers outside the NY and the Bay Area is something like $100k, not the stratospheric packages often discussed here as though they were normal rather than exceptional.

(I've not noticed too much of a love of paperwork here in Germany, but I could certainly see how the stereotype was formed)