Household Ability of Expenditures on Electricity and Energy Resources in the Countries That Joined the EU after 2004

Abstract

The purpose of the following article is to present the situation of the energy market from a household perspective between 2010 and 2020 in selected EU countries (the group of member states which joined EU after 2004). The selected countries when joining the EU had similar economic indicators and to some extent were similar in other macro-economic situations (personal income, unemployment rate, GDP level and annual growth). This article analyzes the past and current situation of the household ability expenditure on electricity and energy resources (petrol—eurosuper 95 and diesel and natural gas), taking into account price, tax conditions and the real possibility to purchase the analyzed energy sources (based on annual net salaries). The paper includes the conclusions and prospects for the future. The main objective of the study is to determine the ability amount of expenditure on electricity, natural gas and liquid fuels by household in the countries that joined the European Union after 2004. The specific objectives of the work include: the evolution of retail prices of energy sources in those countries and prices of electricity, natural gas and liquid fuels—petrol and diesel oil—in the research period from 2010 to 2020. The element that influences the final price, as assessed in this paper, is the share of taxes and compulsory charges imposed by the EU countries covered in this study. The result of the study presented inter alia that energy consumption structure did not change significantly, electricity prices were steadily growing in the countries under assessment, the use of liquid fuels—petrol and diesel oil—in the countries under study, grew over the study period. Furthermore, prices of fuel fluctuated over the period from 2010 to 2020 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in March 2020, but did not cause any significant changes in the prices of energy carriers in the analyzed period, apart from the declines in the prices of eurosuper 95 and diesel.