Indeed. It's not impossible to lay off people in Europe but they can't just say "you're fired!". There's a process and it costs time and perhaps 3 to 6 months of salary and you have to prove the layoff is needed. The business is incentivized to reduce hiring and find other work for the employee to do, instead.

To be fair, "you're fired!" doesn't happen in the US tech industry either. Even for performance-based firings, the employee almost always gets a few months of salary and garden leave in exchange for a release of claims. One of the positive effects of America being an overly litigious society. Unemployment insurance also kicks in.