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The Europeans don't pretend that "mission control" actually controls the current, live sequence of events?

I'm European myself. I understand that the one-hour roundtrip doesn't quite allow for quick interventions, still I would expect operations people to be there "just in case", or at least to monitor the (I presume) continuous down stream... I find that there's a striking lack of activity in that room :)

The descent is long, unpowered, unguided, and 30 minutes away in time - if something goes wrong, all they will be able to do is watch, in fact not even that, because there is no data from the lander yet.

They're not expecting any data till 1400 or so, and then they'll gradually get some descent data back, but whatever happens, they won't be able to affect the outcome of the descent now. Before the data comes in was probably a good time to get some rest/food.

My guess would be they are getting rest now before the flurry of activity and long hours starting soon.

HAL has everything under control.