Remember, in European countries students are admitted to study a specific subject at university, rather than being admitted to the university as a whole and expected to choose a major later on.
So there are multiple courses going on, with a lot of intersection between the topics covered. There's maths for computer scientists (heavy on the discrete maths), maths for engineers (heavy on the integrals and matrices), maths for social scientists (heavy on the statistics), and so on.
So both American and European universities split their year 1 maths courses so they can get a few thousand first-year undergraduates through the largest 300-500 seat lecture theatres. But in Europe it's a split by subject, rather than by choose-your-instructor.