Why were you surprised?

Because I’m from Europe, and we need to provide an ID to get a SIM card

Not who you were responding to, but most of the western world requires IDs already. The US is an outlier on this issue.

I don't think that's true. At least not in the European countries I visit.

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.

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