Romania recorded the European Union’s sharpest household electricity price increase, up 51.6% year on year in national-currency terms in the first half of 2026, while prices remained comparatively low and moved little across much of the Western Balkans, Eurostat data show. The comparison highlights how regulated retail tariffs can mask differences in electricity-system costs.
Household prices were 11.9 eurocents/kWh in Serbia and Albania, 11.6 eurocents/kWh in North Macedonia, 10.3 eurocents/kWh in Montenegro, 9.9 eurocents/kWh in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 8.69 eurocents/kWh in Kosovo. Hungary was at about 11 eurocents/kWh, while Bulgaria was around 13 eurocents/kWh.
Romania’s purchasing-power-adjusted household electricity price reached 46.9 per 100 kWh, the highest in the EU. Its increase stands apart from the limited movement in regulated household prices across much of the region.
Low tariffs do not necessarily mean low costs for the wider power system. Serbia’s October import bill, Kosovo’s winter import exposure and Bulgaria’s compensation programmes illustrate how procurement, balancing and fiscal costs can remain high even when household prices are low.
For investors and industrial buyers, household tariffs alone are not a measure of electricity-market economics or power-system competitiveness. Wholesale price formation, balancing costs, network charges, support schemes and the ability to pass costs through to consumers also shape costs. Subsidies, import exposure, grid charges and balancing costs contribute to a regional divide between countries that expose customers rapidly to system stress and those that defer or socialise the adjustment.
