Romanian household electricity prices rose 51.6% year on year in national-currency terms in the first half of 2026, the sharpest increase in the European Union, while tariffs remained comparatively low and mostly stable across much of the Western Balkans, Eurostat data show. The price comparison highlights different retail outcomes, but not the costs borne elsewhere in electricity systems.
Eurostat’s figures put household electricity prices at 11.9 eurocents/kWh in Serbia and the same level in Albania. North Macedonia was at 11.6 eurocents/kWh, Montenegro at 10.3, Bosnia and Herzegovina at 9.9, and Kosovo at 8.69 eurocents/kWh.
Within the EU, Hungary’s price was about 11 eurocents/kWh, below levels in much of Southeast Europe, while Bulgaria’s was around 13 eurocents/kWh. Romania’s purchasing-power-adjusted household price reached 46.9 per 100 kWh, the highest in the EU.
Regulated or supported retail tariffs can obscure wholesale and wider system costs. Serbia’s October import bill, Kosovo’s winter import exposure and Bulgaria’s compensation programmes illustrate how low household prices can coexist with high procurement, balancing or fiscal costs.
For investors and industrial buyers, household tariffs alone do not show the economics of electricity markets. Wholesale price formation, balancing costs, network charges, support schemes and the ability to pass costs through to consumers all affect those economics. Southeast European markets are increasingly divided between countries that expose customers rapidly to system stress and those that defer or socialise the adjustment. Retail price tables therefore do not, on their own, show power-system competitiveness; subsidies, import exposure, grid charges and balancing costs also shape the comparison.
