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Let's put it this way, the Mean Time Between Failure for many components on European cars is on average considerably lower than for those in Japanese cars and leave it at that.
You can call it maintenance if you want to, but the fact is long term ownership of a European car will cost you more money.
That said, I do believe that European cars have qualities that make them more attractive to keep on the road longer than Japanese cars. Their body and paintwork are much higher quality and when suspension is refreshed, the drive experience is very much retained. Beyond 150,000 miles Japanese cars tend to just be destined for the scrapyard.
To this last point I just did a Cargurus.com search to compare Honda Accords with over 150.000 miles for sale against BMW 3 Series. 118 vs. 739. And based upon how many more Accords are sold that's pretty impressive.
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