Electricity and Gas Prices in Europe, Half-Year Review 2026 — and How Much of It Is Tax

Europe's households paid slightly less for electricity and gas in the first half of 2026 than half a year earlier — although the war around the Strait of Hormuz had already begun. According to Eurostat's release of 30 October, the consumption-weighted EU average for household electricity was 28.3 ct/kWh, 2.2% less than in the second half of 2025 and 1.6% less than a year earlier. Household gas averaged 11.0 ct/kWh, 10.2% below the second half of 2025 and 3.5% below a year earlier — the lowest level since the first half of 2022.

The calm averages hide large moves in individual countries, and most of them were made by governments rather than by markets: Romania ended its price cap, Denmark cut its electricity tax almost to zero and Luxembourg took over its households' network charges. Taxes and levies made up 28% of the average EU electricity price and 32% of the gas price — but the range runs from minus 10% in the Netherlands to 47% in Poland.

Below: the electricity ranking, the biggest movers and why they moved, the tax share country by country, gas, Germany in context and what the figures mean for this winter. All prices include all taxes and levies and refer to Eurostat's standard household bands: 2,500-5,000 kWh a year for electricity and 20-200 GJ, roughly 5,600-55,600 kWh, for gas.

Across the 27 member states, household electricity in the first half of 2026 cost:

• Most expensive: Ireland 38.7 ct/kWh, Germany 36.2 ct, Belgium 35.8 ct, Austria 32.6 ct, Italy 31.4 ct, Sweden 30.6 ct and Poland 30.0 ct
• In the middle: Czechia 28.8 ct, Romania 28.4 ct, Finland 26.9 ct, Cyprus 26.9 ct, Spain 25.1 ct, France 24.9 ct, the Netherlands 24.4 ct, Latvia 24.2 ct, Greece 24.0 ct, Denmark 23.8 ct and Portugal 23.7 ct
• Lower down: Lithuania 21.6 ct, Estonia 21.2 ct, Slovenia 21.2 ct and Luxembourg 20.2 ct
• Cheapest: Hungary 11.4 ct/kWh, Malta 12.7 ct, Bulgaria 13.4 ct, Croatia 18.2 ct and Slovakia 19.9 ct

The gap between the most and the least expensive country is more than threefold: a household using 3,500 kWh a year paid around €1,350 in Ireland and around €400 in Hungary. The cheapest countries keep household prices low by regulation or subsidy.

Ireland has been the most expensive member state since the second half of 2025. Before that, Germany had topped the table for two years, from the second half of 2023 to the first half of 2025; after a fall of 5.7% within a year it is now second. Every country's current price and its history since 2007 is on our household electricity page.

Compared with the first half of 2025, the largest changes in household electricity prices were:

• Romania +47.9%, from 19.2 to 28.4 ct/kWh. The country ended its price cap for households on 1 July 2025, after almost four years (it had applied since November 2021); bills rose sharply as soon as it expired.
• Ireland +19.8%, Finland +18.4%, Poland +17.2%, Slovenia +17.0% and Sweden +15.4%.
• Denmark −31.9%, from 34.9 to 23.8 ct/kWh. On 1 January 2026 Denmark cut its electricity tax from 72.7 øre to 0.8 øre per kWh, the EU minimum, for 2026 and 2027.
• Luxembourg −24.1%, to 20.2 ct/kWh, because the state now pays the network charges for households.
• Czechia −9.3%, Cyprus −8.3%, Estonia −7.8%, France −7.0% and Germany −5.7%.

The pattern is clear: the two biggest falls and the biggest rise in the EU were all decided by governments. Elsewhere prices moved by a few percent up to about a fifth; the decisions of governments moved them by a quarter to a half.

Eurostat also publishes every price without taxes and levies, which shows how much of a household's bill goes to the state — VAT, energy and environmental taxes, and levies such as renewable or network surcharges. In the first half of 2026 the share was:

• Highest: Poland 46.9%, Germany 34.0%, Portugal 33.4%, Sweden 30.9%, France 30.5%, Slovakia 30.2% and Spain 29.0%
• EU average: 28.4%
• Lowest: Ireland 9.4%, Luxembourg 7.4% and Malta 5.9% — and the Netherlands at minus 9.9%

The Dutch figure is not a mistake: every household connection there receives a fixed refund of energy tax that is larger than the taxes on a typical household's consumption, so the price including taxes ends up lower than the price without them. VAT alone ranges from under 5% of the price in Malta and about 6% in Belgium and Greece to about 20% in Denmark, Finland and Sweden and 21% in Hungary, which has the EU's highest VAT rate at 27%.

Taxes are therefore not the main reason why electricity is expensive in the most expensive countries: Ireland has one of the lowest tax shares and the highest price, while Poland has the highest tax share and a price close to the EU average. Network charges and the cost of energy weigh more. In Germany the bill splits roughly into 38% energy and supply, 29% network charges and a third taxes and levies, as our analysis of why electricity is so expensive in Germany explains.

In the first half of 2026 household gas was cheaper than a year earlier in 13 of the 23 member states with data, and cheaper than in the second half of 2025 in 17. The ranking:

• Most expensive: Sweden 22.0 ct/kWh, the Netherlands 16.2 ct, France 13.5 ct, Portugal 12.6 ct, Austria 12.4 ct and Denmark 12.1 ct
• In the middle: Ireland 11.8 ct, Germany 11.6 ct, Italy 11.4 ct and Czechia 9.0 ct
• Lower down: Luxembourg 8.6 ct, Slovenia 8.6 ct, Belgium 8.5 ct, Latvia 8.1 ct, Estonia 8.0 ct, Spain 7.9 ct, Greece 7.7 ct and Bulgaria 6.5 ct
• Cheapest: Hungary 3.3 ct/kWh, Croatia 5.0 ct, Romania 5.9 ct, Slovakia 6.3 ct and Lithuania 6.3 ct — most of them with regulated household prices

Compared with a year earlier the largest falls came in Bulgaria (−14.5%), Greece (−11.3%), Spain (−10.0%), Italy (−8.3%) and Belgium (−7.9%); prices rose in Croatia (+8.9%), Hungary (+7.8%), Slovakia (+6.6%) and Romania (+6.3%). Against the second half of 2025 the drop looks larger — Italy −23%, Spain −18% — but part of that is seasonal, because the second half of the year includes the winter months.

Taxes take an even bigger share of the gas price than of electricity: 32.1% on average, with the Netherlands (55.2%) and Denmark (50.4%) far ahead — both tax gas heavily to push households towards heat pumps and district heating — and Croatia (4.8%) and Greece (8.3%) at the bottom. No current household gas prices are available for Poland and Finland, and Cyprus and Malta have no public gas grid. Rankings and history are on our household gas page.

For German households the half-year brought slight relief. Electricity cost 36.2 ct/kWh, 5.7% less than a year earlier, partly because the federal government is paying €6.5 billion in 2026 to hold down transmission network charges; gas cost 11.6 ct/kWh, 4.9% less. In the EU comparison Germany is now second for electricity, after Ireland, and in the middle for gas.

A household using 3,500 kWh of electricity and 15,000 kWh of gas a year paid about €1,270 for power and €1,730 for gas at these prices — around €3,000 together, against roughly €2,650 at the weighted EU averages. Taxes and levies account for 34% of the German electricity price, above the EU average of 28%, and 31% of the gas price, slightly below the EU average of 32%.

The trend is unlikely to continue: the federal grid subsidy is set to shrink in 2027, and this autumn's wholesale shock has not yet reached the tariffs.

These numbers describe the past, not the coming months. Household tariffs follow wholesale prices with a delay of several months, and the first half of 2026 still largely reflects contracts signed before the war. Since then wholesale gas has more than tripled from its pre-war level — the Dutch TTF benchmark passed €100 per megawatt-hour on 28 October — and wholesale power has followed.

That is why the increases are still ahead of most households: suppliers in Germany and elsewhere are announcing higher tariffs for the turn of the year, and regulated prices are being reviewed. How the winter is shaping up — gas storage, heating oil, wholesale power and government support — is covered in our living heating winter report. For fuel, the equivalent look back at the first half of the year is our fuel price review.

All figures come from Eurostat's half-yearly household price statistics (datasets nrg_pc_204 for electricity and nrg_pc_202 for gas), published on 30 October 2026. Prices are in euros per kilowatt-hour including all taxes, levies and VAT, for the standard consumption bands DC (electricity, 2,500-5,000 kWh a year) and D2 (gas, 20-200 GJ a year). The tax share is the difference between the price with and without taxes and levies, divided by the price with them.

The EU averages in this article are Eurostat's consumption-weighted figures. The country pages on this site also show a simple average of the member states, which reads lower because small, cheap markets count as much as large ones.

Eurostat publishes the figures for the second half of 2026 in spring 2027. They will be the first to show how much of this autumn's price shock has reached household bills.