In this small country in the middle of europe there is a requirement to plan 96 days minimum a year as fixed off days that have to be planned in advance and cannot be changed after that. In advance means at least 14 days prior. This actually is a result of another EU law, the working time directive.
That said, EASA FTL, as bad as it is, is actually in many parts an improvement over EU OPS. It is a lot worse than CAP 371, but for the rest of europe it is not that bad a development. There is still a lot of rather bad wording in that text which leaves quite some room for interpretation and the whole FRMS mess can go horribly wrong, especially as a FRMS on paper might be enough to use those wider set of limits.
And as for the OP, days off abroad are not only a longhaul thing, it is often used on shorthaul operations if switching from very late to very early duties. We had a lot of those duties in the last few years. Fly three or five sectors, end up around midnight abroad, preferably somewhere nice (most of us quite like stockholm or copenhagen, oslo isn't really nice as we stay right at the airport in the middle of nowhere, tel aviv is great [if hamas isn't firing rockets that is] as is milano). The next day is free of flight duty, but not an off day, although it could be part of a 36 hour rest time but usually isn't even that. And on the third day there usually is a report time somewhere between 2:00 to 4:30 in the morning to fly between three and five sectors back or to another destination.