Activities to reduce roaming prices, both within the Western Balkans region and between the Western Balkans and the European Union, are among the greatest successes of regional cooperation coordinated by the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), the organization told Fena.
They recall that the Regional Roaming Agreement, which was signed in 2019 and entered into force on 1 July 2021, enabled Western Balkan citizens to use their mobile phones in the region at the same prices as at home, without additional costs for calls, messages and mobile internet.
This result demonstrated the strength of regional cooperation and trust, and laid the foundation for further connecting the region and its gradual inclusion in the EU’s single digital market.
The RCC states that the next step was to reduce roaming prices between the EU and the Western Balkans, and that the signing of the Roaming Declaration in December 2022 by 38 telecommunications operators from the region and the EU enabled the first price reduction from 1 October 2023.
The agreement is based on the voluntary accession of operators, and the RCC, together with the European Commission, is working to expand the number of signatories and thereby enable even greater benefits for citizens of both the region and the EU.
According to the RCC analysis, compared to March 2023, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina paid up to 49 percent lower prices for roaming packages in July 2024, while standard mobile internet prices (without packages) were reduced by up to 99.8 percent. This means that using mobile internet during short stays in the EU is now many times more affordable than before, which is another indicator of the concrete results of regional cooperation.
The RCC notes that, based on the extremely successful results of both initiatives on the one hand and the intention to provide the region with phased access to the EU single market on the other, the European Commission, in its Growth Plan for the Western Balkans from November 2023, announced the possibility of opening a single Digital Market for the region.
They emphasize that roaming is part of the single Digital Market, and the aforementioned roaming declaration is a step towards the full implementation of “roaming like at home” with the EU. Therefore, this is a process that has been in preparation for some time, and which brings us closer to the desired goal with each of its stages, which is “roaming like at home”.
Negotiations between individual economies and the EU on bilateral roaming agreements are the responsibility of those two parties, while within the RCC, as an umbrella regional organization, the process takes place at the regional level with the aim of preparing the ground for future deeper integration into the Single Digital Market, which implies expanding the number of telecommunications operators that are part of the agreement, and further reducing roaming costs between the Western Balkans and the European Union until the ultimate goal of “roaming like at home” is achieved.
