> I'd rather have shares

At this stage you're not going to get shares, unless they really want you.

What you should be getting is options (with strike price at current/last valuation).

Think about how likely is the exit and where you expect the value to be in 5 years. For example, if company doubles in value, you will get to exercise your 1% for €200k and sell it for €400k (assuming there was no dilution). Not bad, but probably not the life changing event you were expecting, you can get roughly same value by getting a salary that is 40k/year higher with lesser risks.

Of course it gets very different when you expect the valuation to grow 100x. But that requires way more than simply expanding into another country.