My understanding is that French (and presumably other European) banks assigned the liability for fraud to the account holder, whereas in the US, liability for fraudulent credit card charges falls to the banks and the credit card processing networks.
This meant that individual account holders were much more tolerant of chip-and-pin technology, and demanded additional security features like portable card readers, which mean that the credit card never leaves the account holder's possession.
Do you have a source for this? Lite googling suggests this isn't true now in the UK (e.g., http://www.theukcardsassociation.org.uk/faqs/ ) and I can't find any evidence it was true in the past.
This is mostly false. In the past, the liability was completely on the bank. In October, it switched to the merchant only if the merchant hadn't upgraded to a chip reader. The switchover process is continuing, and when it is complete the liability will be with the banks, as it was before.
It's been a while, but I seem to recall in a past company that for card-not-present transactions, the risk of fraud was on us, not on the bank approving the transaction.
This meant that individual account holders were much more tolerant of chip-and-pin technology, and demanded additional security features like portable card readers, which mean that the credit card never leaves the account holder's possession.