For contactless payment, no. But the transactions are limited in amount (according to the article in UK it is 30 GBP and here in France it is 20 EUR). You can also pay only a certain amount before having to use "standard" method with chip & pin.
I'm fairly certain you don't need to use chip, but you do need to use the PIN.
In the UK at least, PIN-challenges for contactless payment are random. I've heard it's supposedly approx 1 in 10 payments require the PIN, but I've been using contactless payment for just over 6 months, and it hasn't asked once (I've also used it a few times in mainland Europe, again, no PIN needed).
Sadly in France for any transaction over 20EUR you have to use the chip. I know that in several other countries you only need the PIN.
Apparently this actually depends on the terminal configuration so I hope that once Apple Pay comes here it will not suffer from the same useless limitation.
nope, just swipe. It doesn't even verify the transaction with the bank because there is a £30 limit on transactions.