I can only speculate, since Europe is a huge place with multiple telco regulatory regimes and lots of transnational telcos. For example:
- France has a version of STIR/SHAKEN
- Germany's Deutsche Telekom has massive presence via local operating entities in poland, austria, czechia etc etc. So it might be that they can assert tighter knowledge of a caller across countries and carriers because its all really DT.
- Similarly Orange/Hutchison in France, Austria, and IIRC north Africa.
Could it be due to pricing differences? I have only been in the EU for 6 months, but one thing I noticed when signing up for cell service, is that SMS and Calling is expensive when calling to a different country. For me to call someone in Germany from The Netherlands, it is €0.23/min.
At that rate, scamming someone on the phone from a different country is prohibitive. The other option would be to setup shop and purchase numbers from all EU nations, which is also prohibitively expensive and probably not as easy since LLC's aren't really a thing.
My guess is the large population of the US + the advantageous legal system for new companies is what makes this a unique issue for Americans.
From what I gathered, it's a lot less of an issue compared to the US, but scam calls & SMS do happen.
My anecdota: I'm French, and receive scam calls from time to time. They are different from the ones you see in the US. Here it's mainly "CPF" scam calls, which is training credits every working person automatically get and they are trying to scam you into paying for a illegitimate training with those (don't ask me for more details, I've not researched it further).
In France, it tends to be less of an issue because the government is at least somewhat invested in fighting such scams, and because the language isn't as universally spoken as English (which is true for most of Europe).
You can usually spot a foreigner speaking French miles away, and it's a red flag for any sane person when an incoming call has an accent.
- France has a version of STIR/SHAKEN - Germany's Deutsche Telekom has massive presence via local operating entities in poland, austria, czechia etc etc. So it might be that they can assert tighter knowledge of a caller across countries and carriers because its all really DT. - Similarly Orange/Hutchison in France, Austria, and IIRC north Africa.
Beyond that, i dont know.