It simply costs way too much airspace designing those nifty arrival transitions
How often do ATC operate the published arrival procedures?
IME (light GA) the answer, in N Europe, is "never". One may be assigned a STAR but then one gets radar vectored to the localiser.
In southern Europe, e.g. Greece, they tend to operate the STARs, but it seems to depend a lot on whether there is a radar controller.