Building HVDC lines from North Africa to Europe, for example, wouldn't be a huge feat of civil engineering. Rather standard stuff, really.

we don't need something that long distance at all

EU has enough areas with sparse population and not that much nature which also are south enough to have it work out well with solar panels of the current generations.

And besides that even most EU countries have enough places in them to still put a lot of solar panels without much issues and/or replacing fields.

going as far as North Africa is a bit too far to be convenient for power transport

Spain and Morocco already have a 1.4 GW DC interconnect and the XLinks project intends to connect Morocco and the UK.