DDG/Bing are ridiculous with ignoring your search terms, even with quotes. I had enough. Google often has a whole page or almost a whole page of clever-widgets before any actual results, not to mention my ethical objections to their behavior and the SEO spam.
Kagi works great, I like the fact that I'm paying for it and my interests are primary in the relationship.
Having some presence in the EU would contribute to peace of mind that your personal data is more or less under jurisdiction of the GDPR, and that there's at least _some_ pressure to actually keep their word on privacy (as small as that pressure turns out to be in practice).
Maybe not the search queries themselves, but at least keep the user information (payment data, personal preferences, etc) within the EU.