I think in most (West-) European countries there are strict regulations/requirements that require ducts/pipes for any kind of power line. When my house was built (35 years ago) there were already regulations in place that required separate ducts for each group, separate groups for wet rooms (kitchen, bathroom) with grounding, etc.
Overall I found the standards of electrical work in Europe is significantly higher than US counterparts. In modern buildings every outlet and line has mandatory grounding, and GFCI is built into the fuse box on every power line for any building that's less than 30 years old. That really came in handy once when I accidentally hit a power line when drilling through the ceiling. I can't imagine doing any kind of renovation work without GFCI on everything.
I've seen none of the problems all these (presumably N American) commenters are reporting, but our power systems are famously much better in Europe. I'm from England but live in Czechia and apart from different plugs everything works the same.
I bought a rice cooker from a Taiwanese woman a couple of years ago and was shocked (fortunately, not literally) to discover that apparently Taiwan runs on American sockets and American (crappy) voltages. Luckily I had an adaptor plug and it seems to cope with 220V mains without releasing the magic smoke.
Overall I found the standards of electrical work in Europe is significantly higher than US counterparts. In modern buildings every outlet and line has mandatory grounding, and GFCI is built into the fuse box on every power line for any building that's less than 30 years old. That really came in handy once when I accidentally hit a power line when drilling through the ceiling. I can't imagine doing any kind of renovation work without GFCI on everything.