Aloha,
The EU DD's have a slightly higher skill cap than most other DD's as they do not have smoke, HOWEVER, in the hands of someone that is good in DD's you can amazing things with this ship line. They're good scout ships and actually have fairly good AA for a DD, and considering the RP they actually are capably of having significantly more staying power than a lot of DD's at similar tiers. I have been wrecked before down to like 100hp and repaired back to 3/4 HP in almost every single tier EU DD. This is quite significant.
Mahalo,
-Hapa