Almost always. It's nice because the terminals can be rather large and if you're going to grab a meal prior to departure, you'd want to go to a restaurant that is near the departure gate. Also, different gates used by the same airline are sometimes in totally disjoint post-security areas. Are these things not problems in Europe?
Europe has airports ranging from some of the world's biggest (LHR, CDG) to some of the smallest.
At some airports, all flights will be international (e.g. Shannon). At others, all flights will be domestic or within Schengen.
Some airports are almost entirely used by budget airlines (London Luton), others have very few budget airline flights (London Heathrow).
That leaves plenty of flexibility for how the airport is operated. I'd expect a gate printed on the boarding pass as the larger airports with longer, non-EU flights. I'm not surprised when a Ryanair flight only announces the gate a short time before departure, since they have such a short turn-around time everything seems to be last-minute.
In the airports I've been to, I don't remember the restaurants being near the gates, but all together in a food court. So I guess you can't really grab a meal near the gate anyway.
As for the security, not really, in my limited experience. My home town's airport does have two separate terminals, with independent security areas, but different airlines fly from each.
