We do hydro and biomass[1] in Sweden. I'm not sure why Germany, France and Italy, given the topographies, would have a problem with that. Have they not diverisifed as much?
Nuclear and wind suffer from NIMYBism and are now nothing more than political totems. PV is going this road now that people are realizing installing solar farms means cutting on forest or actual food farms.
Coal is already pretty much extinct.
Whereas gas is "painless" from a political point of view, private interest in the field (total, engine) have a strong history of political influence, and "gas" wins if RE are installed but the sun does not shine nor the wind blows... So gas is the energy of the future for Europe until there is a breakthrough in fusion or safer modular fission.
This will not make the geopol situation any simpler in the east, and is of course a disaster climate-wise - except maybe for coal-heavy countries like Poland and Chez Republic
I mentally think of power generation reliability as: Uncontrollably variable from hour-to-hour: wind, solar, tidal motion Uncontrollably variable on month-to-year spans: hydro Pretty controllable: nuclear (and fossil fuels)