The US almost always suffers from the early adopter problem. That is, we get the earlier versions of standards merely because we adopt them first, and by the time Europe gets around to adopting them the technology has improved based on what was learned in the US. Note similar things like T1 equivalent E1 being faster, and given that superseding technologies (such as optical carrier) are sold in multipliers of T1 speeds, the Europe versions tend to be speced higher.
Broad adoption of standards is like a marriage: You're stuck with it, flaws and all, and changing to another incompatible one requires a lot of pain and sacrifice, with there being more pain the longer the marriage has lasted. For another perspective on this, look how much of a PITA it was to switch to digital TV, which the US actually did faster than most of the world.
And yes, I know Europe also had magnetic stripe. But like the marriage analogy they didn't have it for as long nor was it adopted as broadly before chip and pin came along, likewise switching wasn't as difficult.
There is a silver lining to our system though:
One time I saw somebody commenting on how much he hates chip and pin because it was supposedly only being pushed so that banks can force you to pay for fraudulent charges, whereas magnetic stripe they supposedly can't. The article was referring to the US adoption, and so I told him that we already have laws that strictly limit liability for consumers that mostly just make banks liable, and they aren't going away. He then lambastes me that "the rest of the world" doesn't do it that way, therefore chip and pin is evil, and I'm a stupid ignorant American for thinking that, even though the article was specifically about the US where such a problem doesn't exist.
Why doesn't it exist? Well, because us backward Americans have been on magnetic stripe for so long, that it was born out of necessity. (Which by the way, looking in his profile revealed he lived in Europe, which isn't "the rest of the world" as other non-European countries do have similar laws to the US, for the same reasons.)