It all comes down to the expected conditions. A nordic tyre is great for what it is intended: packed snow and ice and very low temperatures. Anything else, it sucks. A central european winter tyre needs to be much more well rounded - but this comes with a trade-off. Even if you have snow in central europe, it will often be rather wet, and at the latest after the snow plow came through and spread the corrosion accelerator, it will be slush. Slush ist more like aquaplaning on steroids, so you need to design the tyre profile around that. More and wider grooves will mean less rubber on the ground - and less sipes - which you would need for packed snow and ice.
Also, the rubber compound has to work over a wide range of temperatures - from -20 to +20°C. (Two weeks ago here in southern Germany we had a little more snow than usual, last week, temperatures were down to -12, and this week they are back up to +15°C during the day. You cannot change tyres weekly.)
I've only once had nordic tyres, and they were great for what they were designed for - I needed to get to work early in the morning before the snow plough reached our village, and most importantly I needed to climb out of the valley on a road that often had ice under the snow from car and trucks spinning their wheels. Nordic tyres were the only way I could comfortably do this - european winter tyres would have been nail-biting, or I would have had to resort to chains. A w123 300d has little weight over the rear wheels, so that was indeed challenging. (By contrast, my little Saab 90 did that same hill on old Michelin Alpin which were down to the wear marks just fine...)
But for anything else except snow and ice, the nordics were horrible. They were awful in the wet, and ridiculous in the dry. It was so bad, you could even call it funny. As if you were tripping over your own wear particles...
The nordic winter tyre is a specialist. If you expect to drive in above-freezing weather for more than a couple of days, it usually is the wrong choice. Heck even in Sweden some people choose central european winter tyres! (My parents used to lived in the south of Sweden - roughly halfway between Göteborg and Jönköping. That was southern enough but also inlands enough that winters were completely unpredictable: you could either get a mild winter barely around freezing with lots of rain, or you could have 1.5meters of snow continually from november to april. Coldest temperature we ever had was -27°C. Locals would consequently drive everything: some were on european winters, some on nordics, and some on nordics with studs. Rule of thumb: the closer you were from the highway, the more extreme the tyre choice. Highways used to get salt (and therefore slush), county and municipal roads did not.)
Chains are very annoying. It's no fun putting them on with frozen fingers, it's no fun tearing them off and cleaning them. It's no fun driving on them. Good to have, better to never to never need them.
Also, check clearance! There are several cars where you can only fit chains if they are equipped with the smallest rim/tyre combination. The Wheelwell itself usually isn't the problem, but suspension components. Check your operators manual to see if you can run chains with your specific wheels.
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. CE winter tires got "performance winter" name as the sizes imported, and maybe original market, was for high performance mostly European cars.
