It’s a EU wide requirement

I dunno. I can go to Tesco in Ireland and the UK (fine, UK is not EU no more, but still Europe) and get a sim without ID.

You’re right, I was mistaken. A proposal circulated to have an EU wide ID requirement but it went nowhere. So it depends the country

Nordics, Baltics and a couple of other countries are the places this still works. The rest of Europe is locked down.