The European Commission’s plan to extend its mobile roaming area to EU candidate countries is not going as smoothly and swiftly as hoped, Euractiv reports.
Ukraine and Moldova joined the roaming area on 1 January 2026, meaning Moldovans and Ukrainians in the EU (and EU citizens in Moldova and Ukraine) will be able to make calls, send texts and use mobile data without additional charges.
In October, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that fellow EU candidate countries Albania and Montenegro are set to follow suit later this year.
This latest announcement has raised eyebrows among telecom operators, particularly as it took Ukraine three years to join after a lengthy process. In response, both Ukrainian and Moldovan digital ministers told Euractiv that adhering to the EU free roaming scheme should not be rushed or separated from the accession process.
They cautioned that any fast-tracked inclusion to the roaming area risk creating imbalances, as countries like Ukraine and Moldova underwent "rigorous" procedures, and that any new additions should undergo the same process.
Furthermore, countries that entered earlier warn that further expansion should not come at the expense of market stability.
The head of the telecom lobby GSMA, László Tóth, also said that allowing countries to join the roaming area before completing EU accession process risks diverting resources away from investing in the network more generally.
Delays
The Commission has postponed the presentation of its roaming expansion strategy until spring 2026, after initially planning to announce it last November.
Under current EU rules, national mobile operators pay wholesale fees to one another when their users roam abroad. This allows consumers to access free roaming charges. The costs are capped at €1.10 per gigabyte of data, €0.019 per minute for calls and €0.003 per text.
Another concern is market imbalances. Some EU Member States benefit more from free roaming than others, for example, countries with high tourism numbers such as Italy, Greece or Spain, will have more money coming in. Other countries, such as in the Baltics or Nordics, say it costs them more.
Albania and Montenegro would greatly benefit from signing up during the summer, but operators in other countries could face higher wholesale costs as a result.
Non-EU countries join the roaming area through bilateral arrangements, which also means that Albanians and Montenegrins would not be able to enjoy roaming in their respective countries or any other non-EU participant.
Some other fees still exist with the EU roaming model, for example, when contacting someone in another country. Campaigners are pushing for these to be abolished too.
In December, the EU published a new set of rules allowing telecommunications operators to offer free cross-border calls and texts.
