UNFORTUNATELY, EU edition of PS3 will not be completely backward compatible with most of the Playstation 2 titles. The US and Japan models will certainly be. We believed that Sony could not shock us but it did it again. Where have the Emotion Engine and Graphics Synthesizer chips gone?
Buying a Playstation 3 that won't run the Playstation 2 games would not be what you paid for. The EU users won't have any choice as EU version simply wont play Playstation 2 games.
Maybe we don't need it because they have hundreds of great titles for PS3, so who would like to play old games? Wait, they don't have that much titles, and most of them are only average. Ah, now we get it, the magical word is price reduction. Sony wants to save some money. There will be some backward compatibility, but it will be done via software, and it only means trouble.
Link to angry Sony customers are here.