It is a question which also contains the answer in itself. Yes, it is extremely lenient. As if it were invented to protect the perpetrators and humiliate the victims. I think it is being done on purpose, there is an entire philosophy (quasi-"religion"?) behind that. In Italy, for example, there is an aggressive NGO named
Nessuno tocchi Caino (meaning: "Nobody dare touch Cain"), which campaigns against death penalty and for "rights" of perpetrators of grave criminal acts. "Nobody dare touch Cain", but what about Abel? Sentences for murder have been becoming more and more lenient in the last decades. As if it were not something too hard.
But there is also other side of the coin: EU has surreptitiously introduced death penalty, believe it or not! It is in the Lisbon Treaty, which is scheduled to be accepted in all parliaments, without referenda. According to the infamous treaty in question, death penalty might be applied in times of war or civil unrest. And what is war? Any government could possibly declare that a country in question is at war because, let us say, it has a military contingent in Iraq, Afghanistan or somewhere else (having such contingent means that the country in question technically
is at war, but it only depends on a political will whether or not it will be officially sanctioned). What is civil unrest? It may be up to a very broad definition. Under such circumstances death penalty may be reintroduced, not against murderers (because their crimes are unrelated to the state of war), but against political dissenters.
On one side leniency, on the other side preparations for an eternal state of emergency in which all measures (including death penalty) could be used in the defence of the system.
USA with its gulags is clearly a different case, it cannot be used as any model for the improving of the penal system in European countries.
L\' eurocrazia reintroduce pena di morte segreto
Demand referendum on EU Lisbon treaty