The reference intake is a floor, not a target
European reference values for protein in healthy adults are expressed per kilogram of body mass and are set to cover requirements across a population, meaning the amount below which deficiency risk rises. They were never framed as the amount that maximises anything.
Reading a reference intake as an optimum is the single most common misreading of nutrition guidance.
What the training literature reports
A 2018 systematic review and meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine pooled resistance-training studies with protein supplementation and reported additional gains in strength and lean mass with higher intakes, up to a plateau beyond which the analysis found no further measured benefit.
The practical shape of that finding is a curve that rises and then flattens, not a line. Where exactly it flattens varies with training status, energy balance and how intake was measured in each study.
Protein during an energy deficit
Reviews focused on athletes in energy restriction report higher intakes in that context than in maintenance, on the reasoning that protein needs rise when total energy falls. This is one of the clearer places where 'it depends' has an actual answer: it depends on whether you are in a deficit.
Why protein is hard to log accurately
Protein sits mostly in foods sold by weight and eaten in variable portions: meat, dairy, legumes. That puts it squarely in the category where a scan identifies the product correctly and still says nothing about how much of it you ate, which is where most logging error in this macro comes from.