Germany is very specific in many of these things and the rest of EU is different :-).

Right, but that contradicts the parent assertion that it's outright illegal. FWIW I'm not sure I buy that - there are way too many services and companies, large and small, that don't have this symmetry of subscription.

It's a recent EU directive (2017 I think) and might not be implemented in every national law yet, I don't know. A lot of companies haven't caught up yet and enforcement might vary.

It's an EU directive.

I don't know when you last tried to cancel anything, but if you cite the court case from 2017 on this, pretty much every service is very quick to accept your cancellation via email ;)

By now it’s law (unless I’m misremembering badly) that you need to be able to cancel the same way you signed up. So unless you signed up via a letter, you’ll be able to cancel without one, even in Germany.