I think the decision has something to do with SE company structure and previously established experience in working in certain countries and translating to certain languages. Their first MMO FFXI was available in English, French and German as well. Those are also the three most spoken languages in EU. I would imagine they're using same resources to translate to English, French and German in XIV than they do for XI.

Servers aren't the reason as all servers are located in either Tokyo (JP) or Montreal (NA, "EU").