Ah, so mythology. Most of the European nations with F-35 currently either joined the program from the beginning decades ago, or want to participate in nuclear

Ah, so mythology. Most of the European nations with F-35 currently either joined the program from the beginning decades ago, or want to participate in nuclear deterrent and have no other option (unless France decides to share their nukes, but that hasn't happened yet, and you can bet they'll want you to buy Rafale for the privilege if they do), or want stealth capabilities which nobody else can offer right now, or want greater compatibility with the US munitions stockpile which is vastly larger than what Europe has available... etc. Jets take a long time to develop, the time for Europe to get serious about "strategic autonomy" in that respect was 2 decades ago. That didn't happen, so now the F-35 is the only option if they want the capability to penetrate Russian ground-based air defenses and consistently beat the Su-57 (cough all 8 of them, but it's possible they scale up eventually).