Don't know about that, "Europe" is a big place. Credit cards are pretty common in the UK at least, and stuff like balance transfer cards (for shuffling) are too. Maybe not to American extents, but hardly a weakness.
In fact, looks like more people in Iceland, Norway and Switzerland own credit cards than the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/675371/ownership-of-cred...
I don't believe this about Switzerland though. They are a very typical people that abhors spending money you don't have. But I think they may be counting debit cards there.
Steal (or mischarge) my credit card, run up 10k in charges, no problem. No money ever comes out of my bank account and I dispute the charges/report the card stolen.
Steal my debit card, run up 10k in charges...there's 10k gone out of my account until the bank resolves the situation.
In Europe, banks don't like you taking out credit cards. Borrowing money is viewed as a weakness and it's best to never do it.
In America it's considered a virtue to have many credit cards and shuffle them so you can be seen to pay it off. Really weird.