Why is ETH fee so high?

I understand that BTC has quite a high fee, as it stems from the fact of the POW design where miners need, among other things, to cover electricity and ASICs costs.

However, what's puzzling me is why the ETH fee is so high? They switched to POS, so only validators are needed. Yet, the fee is high, even higher than in the case of BTC, especially when you operate with smart contracts.

I am wondering, what is the reason that, for example, SOL and other POS L1 coins have significantly lower fees than ETH. It cannot be due to the volume of transactions, as for example, the mentioned SOL also has a huge processing volume.