I can't talk for European sooaps,but our British ones are way less glamourous than US ones... We have Eastenders, set in a fictious East End London borough (think Cockney), Coronation Street which is started in the late 50s and is still going strong, set in a fictious town near Manchester, full of gritty northerners (not!) and Emmerdale - an account of Yorkshire farming folk. In Scotland there is River City, set in Glasgow and we used to have Take the High Road, set in a farming community beside a loch...
We don't see any of the US soaps, ie continuous drama as they like to call them nowadays... Well, they may be on cable, but I've never gone looking for them, so I cannot state absolutely that we don't have them!