Croatia will spend about €170 million to hold household electricity, gas and heating costs below market levels through winter, shielding consumers from wholesale volatility but further delaying a return to full price pass-through.
The measures will run from Oct. 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027, with about €126.4 million allocated to electricity and €43.7 million to gas and district heating.
The government estimates the programme will hold the average household electricity bill at around €43.33 per month, compared with about €58.25 without intervention.
Gas support is expected to prevent what officials estimate would otherwise be an average price increase of roughly 16%.
Transmission and distribution tariffs charged by HOPS, HEP ODS and Plinacro will also remain unchanged during the support period.
The policy gives Croatian households another winter of relatively predictable energy costs, but it increasingly separates consumer bills from the underlying economics of electricity and gas markets.
That trade-off matters as Croatia faces rising expenditure on grids, renewable integration and generation.
Wholesale energy markets have normalised compared with the extreme levels of 2022, but they remain vulnerable to gas-price shocks, hydrology and regional electricity scarcity.
By absorbing part of that volatility through subsidies and frozen tariffs, the government reduces near-term inflation but transfers more market risk onto the public sector.
The intervention also weakens incentives for households to respond to scarcity or reduce consumption when wholesale costs rise.
For utilities and network operators, extended tariff restraint can create a different problem.
Croatia requires substantial investment in transmission and distribution infrastructure as renewable capacity expands, while HEP must continue financing generation, flexibility and hydro assets.
Holding regulated charges unchanged can make the gap between investment needs and consumer pricing increasingly difficult to manage.
Croatia is therefore extending an energy-crisis policy well into a more normal market environment.
The immediate benefit is political and inflationary stability.
The longer-term issue is how and when Zagreb unwinds support without creating a sharp adjustment in household bills.
For the market, the latest package sends a clear signal: Croatian retail energy prices will remain politically managed even when wholesale prices say otherwise.
