Retirement accounts are a thing in Europe though. In Poland for example there's IKE and IKZE. IKE is a bit simpler of the two. If you hold your money on IKE until you're 60 you're not paying taxes on that. Can invest in stocks or bonds.

Yes, as always it depends on the country. Germany and a bunch of others have nothing except completely useless insurance/capital guaranteed options.

For investments, you invest post-tax and pay capital gains when withdrawing.