Can anyone tell me why there isn't a CIX in Europe? Or perhaps one is in the works?

Well, there are a number of interconnect points in Europe, the one in London being one, the ones in Stockholm, Amsterdam and Paris (and Oslo, Helsinki and Copenhagen) being other ones. There are probably more. Some of these are there mainly (or solely) to give more efficient connectivity internally in a country, some of them have a wider scope.

This may seem like an ignorant question (or at least, "politically uninformed"), but it seems abhorent to me that all the various commerical providers in Europe have to pull lines to Alexandria, VA (or wherever) to connect to each other.

The network service providers in Europe have a need to go to the US anyway, and widening the US capacity may be cheaper than buying corresponding europe-internal international capacity (sad but true). This is however only one side of the issue. The issue is also one of priorities, money and (gee ;-) politics. I can't see that we wouldn't have the same problems with a CIX in Europe as we have with the currently established Internet exchange points. Please also note that the "CIX" concept has some perceived extra baggage (e.g. the original concrete implementation) that some people feel we are better off without. If you are specifically thinking of the route you have to follow to get from res.enst.fr to e.g. ub4b.eunet.be, well, ask the respective parties and find out why they appear to be dragging their feet. (My somewhat old information tells me that an interconnection was planned, and for all I know it may still be planned.) - Havard