I'd love for someone to chime in with specific details. I looked quickly at the French and US sites to compare. France does offer AppleCare+ for 299,00 € on a random MacBook I chose.
The US page is pretty clear that it extends a 1-year hardware warranty to 3-years and extends 90 days of technical support. In recent years they seem to focus more on accidental damage (with an additional per-incident fee).
The French website is more hand-wavy around improved hardware warranty. It also mentions the tech support, but the value seems to be the accidental damage.
The accidental damage math in the US is a tough one for me. $300 for AppleCare+ and $50 per incident goes a long way towards paying outright for a repair or buying a new laptop. The hardware warranties seem to be significantly better in Europe and historically the biggest value-add in the US. AppleCare+ just seems a lot less useful in Europe.
I wouldn't say AppleCare is the same as having the extended warrenty to obey the EU consumer law. AppleCare includes a bunch of things that are outside of normal "warrenty" coverage.