Only because you live in Europe, where iMessage is useless because everyone picked Whatsapp and Telegram first. In the US it's the opposite: everyone picked iMessage[0]. The irony of this is that iMessage might actually be helped in the EU by the EU trying to break Apple's US monopoly on iPhones.

[0] I suspect the reason for this is because free texting was the norm in the US while EU carriers charged per message. While iMessage was free in both cases, it relies on you knowing that green bubbles are green because they cost money, whereas "just install Whatsapp and its free" is easier to know.