Russia and Italy - not the biggest sample of Europe. You'll find that northern and western European countries are a bit better about this (i.e. Scandinavia, the British Isles, BeNeLux and the German-speaking countries).

In Italy it's always been a free-for-all.

See this link: http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.html (better with sound, if possible)



Oh and BTW, any queue-jumping you see in Europe is trivial compared to what you get in Asia. In China it's a zoo in any situation where queueing would be helpful.