Well, this came as a bit of a shocker to me I have to admit. Lomion has sniffed out yet another post just made on the official Italian forums:

Al momento non è prevista l’apertura di server situati fisicamente in Europa prima dell’uscita del gioco. At the moment, there is no plan to open European located servers before the release of the full game.

It’s short but packs a powerful punch as I was of the assumption the European gamers, in fresh possession of beta keys, would be playing locally in the beta eventually.

Blizzard must be confident with the EU infrastructure to go into launch if the hardware is not being tested before retail. I really hope that EU players, myself included, are not going to find themselves with all sorts of connection/stability issues when the game launches.

It seems a little risky to me. I know from listening to tech people burst blood vessels when they’ve set up a machine and then set up an identical one only for it to not work in the same way and I have to endure hours of listening to “but wtf is it not working?! I set the thing up exactly the same, it’s identical ffs!” This situation feels risky for Blizzard, especially with their penchant for iteration.