Afaik UK ATMs do use chip-and-pin -- the thiefs you referenced installed a pinhole camera in order to retrieve PINs.

I do agree that skimming exists over here as well, a friend of mine got his card cloned once. He'd used it with an ATM located in a very central and visible place, famous for night-time entertainment -- thiefs must have thought drunk people don't pay too much attention to this sort of thing, especially when they've been queuing for a while (which they typically have to, at this location).

Same in Italy and France, last I heard; places where banks are extremely fraud/security-conscious and continuously maintain their infrastructure to guard from these threats.

Yes, was walking passed UK bank as it opened the other day and the anti-pinhole camera protocol was being carried out. One of the staff went round all the ATMs sweeping his hand across all surfaces to check that there wasn't anything untoward.