Techniques or proposais to require transactions to be included in a block?
If the attacker has minority hashrate, I don't think this is much of a problem. If he excludes all transactions in his blocks but doesn't try to orphan other blocks, the worst thing that can happen is a x2 increase in the average time until first confirmation (no effect on subsequent confirmations). This is fairly minor.

If the attacker has majority hashrate, he can orphan all other blocks and exclude all transactions, and then transactions will never be confirmed. This is a problem and the main variant of the >50% attack. Possible solutions include modifying the branch selection mechanism to prefer blocks with more high-priority transactions - meaning that even with majority hashrate, if you try to deny transaction you're not guaranteed to beat the honest branch.

Incidentally, if the attacker has >40% hashrate, there is a technique to amplify his hashrate and get more than his fair share of blocks. So if, say, he has 49% hashrate and used this technique, he can get close to 100% of blocks, significantly delaying tx confirmation.