Interestingly, here in Finland retailers are required by their terms to check your ID for magstripe purchases over 50 EUR. This policy predates chip cards, i.e. not a new thing.
So there is some regional variation in practices.
So there is some regional variation in practices.
Anyway, this mostly faded away since most of new cards are chip&pin and, more importantly, in Italy most of the people use debit cards (Bancomat is the common debit circuit here) or... cash :-\