I am also European and I did a lot of recruiting: in my country, at least, there can be a test period but you must hire the test employee if you cannot prove they are not qualified. For example, you cannot get 2 people for testing with the plan to keep only one, which would be in line with the idea of "hire fast, fire fast".

Also in Europe, more precisely in Italy we have existing employee that we are trying for over 5 years to get rid of; as long as they come to the office every day, HR said we cannot fire them. This is also blocking new hiring because the positions are occupied, even if they don't do anything useful. Also because of that we had to send people to early retirement in other countries just to free up headcount for new people with specific skills we need.