The protection tax Europe paid used to be for protecting against USSR/Russia. This was virtually not needed since decades. If we're being pragmatic, the protection tax became one against the US.

The EU unfortunately has an agent of chaos always in its side that can do a lot of indiscriminate damage around it if triggered.

Those in the protection racket know how to create a market for it, with layers and layers of plausible deniability that you'll get the chance to start to unwrap maybe 70-80 years from now.