I haven't looked into whether it's specifically an issue but in France it's notoriously hard to fire employees and indeed a lot of work is done by workers hired from agencies. This is also because it is very hard to make temporary contracts here.

Czech Republic here. We are somewhere between France and the US when it comes to hardness of firing people.

Agency work is extremely common here, especially on the lower level of the job ladder. Gig economy and contractors are common even in higher settings, such as software development.