From July 1, 2021, all tariffs should be removed, under the concept “Roam like at Home”.

The agreement is intended to facilitate communication in the region and harmonize the telecommunications market.

In 2014, BIRN reported that the cost of roaming in the Balkans was up to six times higher than the cost in Western Europe, according to studies at the time.

Earlier attempts to remove roaming costs included only specific countries, but not the whole region, and were complicated by Serbia’s dispute with Kosovo over its status as an independent state.

Western Balkans roaming prices

Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro reached an agreement on reducing the prices of mobile phone calls abroad in 2014. According to European Commission data, they cut roaming costs by up to 80 percent in the Western Balkans since 2015, as BIRN reported.

“We already have an agreement in place for four countries, but, if we want to include the entire Western Balkans, that also means Albania plus Kosovo … of course, there is a political connotation here regarding the status of Kosovo. If the signed agreement includes only the four aforementioned countries, then that would practically mean that roaming charges would be abolished in the summer of 2021,” Serbia’s Minister of Telecommunications, Rasim Ljajic, said in November 2018.

In May 2018, at the Sophia summit, the European Union set aside €30 million for investments in broadband roll-outs in the region, as part of a Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans, to move the region’s economies towards digitization.