EU May petrol prices up 13.67 percent vs Feb; diesel up 23.89 percent

Brussels – Filling up the tank is getting increasingly expensive and can cost up to 9% of monthly income. It depends on where you live in Europe.

Amid the energy crisis in the Middle East, fuel prices across the European Union have risen sharply and unevenly. Between the 23 February and 4 May readings of the European Commission’s Weekly Oil Bulletin, the EU average has risen 13.67 per cent for petrol (from €1.64 to €1.86 per litre) and 23.89 per cent for diesel (from €1.59 to €1.98 per litre).

The steepest increases in petrol prices were recorded in Czechia (+26.36 per cent), Finland (+25.94 per cent), and Belgium (+24.44 per cent). For diesel, the largest increase was in Bulgaria (+43.16 per cent), followed by Finland (+35.77 per cent) and Cyprus (+34.38 per cent). At the other end of the scale, Ireland and Spain remain below +4 per cent for petrol; Malta has not moved a cent.

Italy is below the EU average for petrol – from €1.655 to €1.789 per litre (+8.14 per cent) – and in line for diesel, which rose from €1.702 to €2.046 per litre (+20.20 per cent). A 50-litre fill-up now costs €89.46 for petrol and €102.28 for diesel.

But gas pump prices tell only half the story: how much a fill-up weighs on household budgets also depends on monthly income. We calculated this by measuring the percentage of monthly income that a full tank (50 litres, by convention) represents in each country, using Eurostat data on annual income (median equivalent net income, to be precise).

The bottom line is that refuelling costs more in Eastern Europe, where incomes are generally lower, but fuel prices vary less proportionally. In Romania, Hungary, and Greece, where median monthly incomes range from €997 to €1,134, a diesel fill-up accounts for up to 8.70 per cent of a monthly salary. In Italy, with a median monthly income of around €1,885, the same transaction accounts for 5.43 per cent for diesel and 4.75 per cent for petrol. In Luxembourg, the figure drops below 3.3 per cent.