Petrol Prices Are Rising Across the EU

Key Takeaways

• Petrol prices rose across most EU countries between April 2025 and 2026, reflecting a shared global increase in oil costs.
• A shared global shock raised prices in the EU, but national systems determined how much consumers actually pay.
• The EU’s fuel price increase was partly driven by a global oil price shock, linked to geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, including the Iran conflict and risks around the Strait of Hormuz.
• National tax systems and policies explain (e.g., tax cuts) why price increases vary significantly between countries.
• Germany ranks among the highest at €2.241 per litre, driven by taxes and carbon pricing.
• Countries with subsidies or regulated pricing saw smaller increases or stable prices.

Petrol Prices in the EU

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Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

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Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

The first part of the story takes place outside Europe.

Global oil prices rose over the past year, driven in part by renewed geopolitical tension, including the 2026 conflict involving Iran and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. Oil markets respond quickly to risks to supply and critical transit routes, even when physical flows are not fully cut off.

In these conditions, markets tend to price in uncertainty:

• potential supply shortages,
• higher shipping and insurance costs, and
• future disruption risks.

This creates a “risk premium” that pushes crude oil prices upward. Because oil is traded globally and most international crude is priced against benchmarks such as Brent, these effects spread widely across regions.

As global oil prices rose in 2026, fuel costs in most EU countries also increased compared with 2025, in line with the broader 2026 energy‑price shock linked to Middle‑East‑related supply risks.

If global markets explain the direction, they do not explain the differences.

Across the EU, petrol prices are heavily shaped by taxation and policy design:

• taxes often account for over half of the final average petrol price,
• most countries combine fixed excise duties with VAT as the main components of the tax burden on motor fuels
• some also layer on carbon‑pricing mechanisms (e.g., carbon taxes), which put a price on CO₂ emissions from fuel use.

This creates a simple effect. Because taxes are fixed per litre, the same rise in global oil prices leads to a bigger jump at the pump in high‑tax countries than in low‑tax ones.

At the same time, some governments actively buffer fuel‑price increases through:

• temporary tax cuts on fuels,
• targeted subsidies or price‑support measures, and
• regulated pricing systems (e.g., temporary price caps or maximum retail prices)

This is why countries like Spain (+0.037 €/L) and Poland (+0.025 €/L) saw only modest increases at the pump, while others with less intervention experienced sharper rises.

Germany faces the highest fuel prices in the EU

Germany’s Euro 95 prices reached €2.241 per litre in April 2026. This places it among the highest in Europe, reflecting structural choices in tax design rather than short‑term volatility.

Fuel Price Changes in Germany Amid US-Iran Tensions ->

1. High baseline taxation

Germany applies:

• a substantial energy tax (Energiesteuer) on mineral oils, and
• the standard German VAT rate of 19% on the final price of fuel at the pump.

Taxes on fossil fuels (e.g., petrol, diesel) form a large share of the final fuel price. This effectively creates a higher starting point before global market changes are added.

2. Carbon pricing on fuels

Since 2021, Germany has added a carbon price to transport fuels like petrol and diesel. This means fuel suppliers must pay a fee for the CO₂ their fuels produce, and that cost is passed on at the pump.

The Umweltbundesamt and EU‑level analyses state that the system starts at €25/tCO₂ in 2021 and rises in steps (e.g., toward €45–55/tCO₂ by 2024–2025, then a price corridor from 2026) [7] [8].

Because of this, petrol prices are being pushed up steadily in the background, even when global oil prices are stable.

3. Direct transmission of global prices

Compared with some other EU countries, Germany has relied less on ongoing fuel‑price interventions, such as broad subsidies or permanent price caps. 

As a result, increases in global oil prices, driven by factors such as geopolitical tensions, tend to be passed through to consumers at the pump more directly. 

Read a more detailed guide on Germany’s high fuel prices ->

Some countries appear more stable:

• Italy (+0.001 €/L): petrol prices changed little year‑on‑year, thanks to tax smoothing and past price‑mitigation measures.
• Sweden (=): prices stayed broadly stable, in line with its low‑tax, regulated‑market design.
• Malta (=): fuel prices are kept stable by a government‑regulated pricing mechanism that limits retail price changes even when global oil prices move.

In all these cases, relative stability reflects policy choices that dampen price volatility, not an absence of external pressure.

The rise in petrol prices across Europe over the past year is not driven by a single cause, but by a sequence: 

• a global shock pushed the baseline higher, and
• national tax, subsidy, and regulation systems determined how strongly that shock was felt. 

This is why all EU countries moved roughly in the same direction, yet ended up at very different price levels.