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While PhDs without masters are common in Europe, universities may have doctoral training centers that have an extra years to act like a masters. My wife went straight from undergrad at Oxford and her PhD was four years instead of the usual three with the first year consisting of short courses & projects.

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The UK is very different from continental Europe. Your statement isn't quite valid.

The EU has had the BMD reform in the past where education systems were standardized to a bachelor-master-doctorate three-party system.

To get to a PhD, you need first a bachelor (the name usually varies depending on the country, e.g., it is called a license in France), then a master.

That's the very common pipeline there. Doing a PhD without a master is a rare thing.

Huh, interesting. Most of my friends who have PhDs don't have masters and that's Europe-wide! The UK definitely is different though. I got onto a Masters in CS without a Bachelors and was discussing carrying on into a PhD which would have been pretty interesting to explain on my CV.

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