## 1. Overview ## Source details **Canonical URL:** [1. Overview](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/wp/2022/english/wpiea2022262-print-pdf.pdf) ## Other formats - [Markdown version](/-/media/files/publications/wp/2022/english/wpiea2022262-print-pdf.pdf.md) - [Structured JSON version](/-/media/files/publications/wp/2022/english/wpiea2022262-print-pdf.pdf.json) --- ### Key facts and context - The crisis is driven by a sharp reduction in Russian natural gas flows to Europe: Russian pipeline gas exports stood at about 15 percent of their average level in 2019, a drop corresponding to about one-third of European total natural gas consumption. - Europe has largely replaced the reduction in Russian natural gas with alternative sources, but at a high cost. - European natural gas and electricity wholesale prices peaked in late summer at over ten and seven times their early 2021 levels, respectively, before moderating in the fall. - Natural gas prices are expected to be significantly higher than historic averages into the medium term, albeit well below peaks seen in the summer of 2022. ### Wholesale and medium-term price signals - Futures prices as of November 2022 imply: - about 75 percent of the natural gas price shock (defined as the increase in the average price between 2022 and 2019) will be unwound by 2026, while the other 25 percent will be permanent. - medium-term prices settling around €50/MWh for 2026, which is two and half times the €20/MWh price expected before the war. - much below the peak spot price of €300/MWh observed in the summer of 2022. - Wholesale price heterogeneity across countries arises from infrastructure bottlenecks, differences in the electricity generation mix, and diverging price intervention policies (e.g., Spanish and French natural gas prices have frequently been around 50 percent below the benchmark Dutch TTF price). ### Consumer pass-through and retail prices - Prior to the crisis, retail natural gas and electricity prices were roughly equally composed of wholesale energy prices and taxes, levies, and network charges. - The average monthly passthrough for natural gas prices between January and August of 2022 was only about 20 percent. - The speed and degree of passthrough to retail prices have differed significantly across Europe due to contract structure, competition, and government mechanisms to limit passthrough. ### Impact on households and distributional effects - Surging energy prices raised the cost of living of the average European household by just under 6 percent in 2022 relative to early 2021 (directly through energy bills and indirectly via non-energy goods). - The impact is projected to climb to over 7 percent in 2023 on the basis of November 2022 futures prices and passthrough estimates. - The loss in purchasing power is regressive: lower-income households are more affected because they spend a larger share of their budget on necessities, including energy; some middle-income households (not covered by existing social safety programs) are also substantially affected. ### Fiscal and macroeconomic constraints - EU governments announced energy support packages averaging 2.4 percent of GDP for 2022 and 2023 (note: for the full sample of 41 European countries in the survey the average fiscal cost is 2.3 percent of GDP). - About half of the announced fiscal cost comes from untargeted, price-suppressing policies. - These announced costs are significantly higher than what it would have cost governments to fully compensate the bottom 40 percent of households for the increase in the cost of living from the energy price shock. - Public debt in Europe increased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing fiscal space; with central banks raising policy rates, financing conditions have tightened and borrowing costs have risen for households and governments. ### Recommended policy orientation (principles and practical recommendations) - First-best approach: allow price signals to operate while providing targeted income support to the vulnerable. - Allowing prices to reflect market conditions is critical to incentivize demand adjustment. - Targeting support based on household income and vulnerability (housing type, family size, geographical location) is ideal. - Governments should incentivize energy conservation by allowing price signals to work more strongly than they have so far. - Shift from broad-based to more targeted relief to: - reduce energy demand, - contain inflationary pressures, - preserve fiscal space and avoid loosening overall fiscal policy. - Keep relief well targeted to avoid bolstering aggregate demand excessively and triggering second-round wage-price dynamics. ### Energy use and conservation targets - Households together with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) directly consume around 25 percent of natural gas in Europe; electricity generation accounts for another 35 percent of total natural gas consumption. - EU countries agreed on voluntary national consumption reduction targets of 15 percent for natural gas and 5 percent for electricity through the first quarter of 2023 compared to their average consumption in the same period during the five preceding years. - Analysis in Box 1: European households could have saved about 50 percent more gas in the first three quarters of 2022 than they actually did, corresponding to about 2 percent of total European gas consumption in the pre-pandemic years, if passthrough from wholesale to retail natural gas prices had been more complete. ### Implementation challenges for targeted measures - Technical and political constraints can impede rapid deployment of targeted, non-price-distorting measures: - Information/data gaps and administrative costs: lack of joint data on household income and/or energy consumption—especially for households outside social safety nets—hinders identification of vulnerable households. - Confidentiality or privacy laws (example: within federations) and technical constraints (e.g., individual tax filing systems that lack household-level income data) limit governments’ ability to target support. - Lack of information on households’ bank accounts complicates delivery of transfers to those outside existing social benefit programs. - Administrative resource constraints reduce the capacity to design and launch new means-tested programs quickly. - In some cases, governments have successfully expanded safety nets or used online platforms to invite applications; outcomes differ across countries. ### Box 1: Estimated Foregone Gas Savings ### Counterfactual approach and scenarios - Assessment relies on constructing counterfactual retail prices that would have prevailed without price-suppressing measures; this is complicated by: - pre-existing institutional and legal differences across Europe that influence passthrough from wholesale to retail prices; and - the large magnitude of the current shock, which is outside the historical range and implies historical passthrough rates may not be a good guide. - Two exercises provide an upper and lower bound on foregone gas savings: - Full and fast passthrough scenario: compare observed retail prices with prices under a hypothetical full and fast passthrough of TTF prices to retail prices across Europe. This likely overestimates the impact of new measures because pre-existing institutional features and smoothing would have led to less than full passthrough anyway. - Historical passthrough scenario: compare observed retail prices with prices implied by historical country-specific passthrough estimates. This likely underestimates the impact of new measures because the large current shock likely makes historical smoothing infeasible without severe solvency implications for energy providers. - For each price scenario, a range of elasticities is used to recover the impact on gas demand: -0.1 to -0.3. ### Quantitative findings - Estimated additional household gas savings under the two scenarios (2022 Q1–Q3): - Full passthrough to end users: gas savings could have been higher by 5–15 percent of consumption. - Historically observed rates of passthrough: gas savings could have been higher by 1–3 percent of consumption. - Mid-point calculation and implications: - Using the mid-point of the above range (8 percent), a rough estimate suggests household gas savings might be 50 percent higher than they have been so far. - Households account for around 25 percent of EU gas demand. - This implies an aggregate drop in European natural gas demand of 2 percent of pre-war consumption, contributing to the EU’s 15 percent consumption reduction target. ### Policy implications and interpretation - There is room to increase household energy savings by moving closer to high levels of passthrough. - The choice of measures affects incentives: - Measures that suppress retail prices limit demand adjustment and can reduce energy savings. - Historical passthrough patterns may understate current feasible passthrough given the unprecedented shock and solvency pressures on energy providers. - The elasticity range (-0.1 to -0.3) is used to translate price differences into demand responses; evidence suggests the elasticity in Germany could have been towards the upper end of this range during the current shock. ### Targeted, Implementable, and Practical Energy Relief Measures for Households in Europe ### Key measures and country examples - 6.5 eurocents per KWh for up to 2.75 MWh per month for natural gas. - Estonia: compensate households for 80 percent of the price of natural gas above €80 per MWh for natural gas consumption of up to 2600 KWh in consumption per month. - Austria: announced an electricity price cap at 10 eurocents per KWh for the period December 2022-June 2024, applied to 80 percent of the electricity consumed by the household. - Poland: announced in September 2022 a cap on the 2023 electricity prices for household consumption of up to 2000 KWh, for which about two-thirds of households are eligible. - Netherlands: announced a cap on the price of consumption for each household or SME (“small consumers”) up to a certain consumption volume, set at the median consumption volume of these consumers. ### Findings on impacts and distributive consequences - Surging energy prices are projected to raise the cost of living of the average European household by around 6 percent this year relative to early 2021. - Lower-income households tend to have the greatest relative loss in purchasing power and the least means to cope with large increases in the cost-of-living. - Some lower middle-income families not covered by existing social safety programs may need assistance to prevent energy poverty. ### Policy assessment and recommendations - First-best: let price signals operate and provide targeted relief to vulnerable households. - Practical challenge: institutional, political, and technical constraints have made targeted support difficult, prompting broad price-suppressing measures that are fiscally costly and reduce incentives to save energy. - Second-best implementable options: - Rebates on energy bills that are not linked to current volume of consumption (to avoid distorting price signals). - Block tariffs that preserve price signals for consumption above a certain threshold. - Make relief subject to income taxation or introduce one-off solidarity taxes on higher-income households to limit fiscal costs and enhance progressivity. - Offset increased spending on energy support measures with fiscal tightening in other areas to support monetary policy in curbing inflation. - Institutional recommendation: urgently develop comprehensive information systems on household incomes and energy use to enable better targeting of future energy-cost relief and to support the green transition. ### Consumer energy price forecasts and passthrough assumptions - Forecast inputs: futures prices for Brent oil (liquid fuels), Dutch TTF market futures (natural gas), country-specific electricity futures, and average Newcastle and Rotterdam futures (coal). - Passthrough defined as the ratio between one-year HICP inflation and wholesale price inflation for each energy good; passthrough coefficients have generally trended upwards in 2022. - Forecast approach: - For countries in the top 20th percentile of observed passthrough, assume maximum observed passthrough holds over the projection horizon. - For others, assume passthrough will surpass their observed maximum and reach coefficients seen in high-passthrough countries, reflecting delayed passthrough from fixed-term contracts. - Projected median increases (relative to January 2021): - Consumer natural gas prices in 2023: 140 percent (median projected increase). - Consumer electricity prices in 2023: 55 percent (median projected increase). - Heterogeneity: natural gas price in 2023 ranges between a quarter higher and quintuple that of January 2021 across countries. - Liquid fuels: with wholesale oil and coal futures edging down in 2023 and relatively high passthrough, consumer liquid fuel inflation prices are projected to moderate next year but remain about 30–40 percent higher than their early-2019 levels. ### Typology of country measures - Price-suppressing policies: - Broad-based cuts to excise duties or VAT rates on energy products (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Romania). - Caps on retail prices of energy products (France, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, U.K. for natural gas, and Austria, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia for electricity). - Energy bill discounts and fee reductions; discounted social tariffs for lower-income households (Belgium, Greece, Italy, U.K.). - Block tariffs for electricity (Austria, Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland). - Income support to households: - Cash transfers (Austria, Cyprus, Czech Rep, France, Germany, Spain, U.K.). - Energy bill vouchers (Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden). - Energy efficiency grants/subsidies for vulnerable households or broader coverage (Lithuania, Luxembourg, Sweden). - Examples of targeted design: expanding coverage of existing social assistance programs (Belgium, Luxembourg); progressive or income-taxable lump-sum transfers (Cyprus, Germany). - Fiscal cost range: fiscal costs of household support measures, including price-suppressing policies, range from less than 1 to close to 6 percent of GDP in European countries. ### Fiscal cost evidence (selected country totals, percent of GDP) - Malta: 5.64 - United Kingdom: 5.07 - France: 4.25 - Slovakia: 4.14 - Austria: 4.07 - Greece: 4.05 - Lithuania: 3.77 - Kosovo: 3.58 - Poland: 3.57 - North Macedonia: 3.10 - Moldova: 3.08 - Serbia: 3.06 - Romania: 2.86 - Italy: 2.82 - Croatia: 2.73 - Netherlands: 2.71 - Portugal: 2.68 - Albania: 2.65 - Turkey: 2.55 - Germany: 2.54 - Luxembourg: 2.26 - Czech Republic: 2.20 - Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2.03 - Norway: 1.77 - Estonia: 1.72 - Belgium: 1.62 - Slovenia: 1.55 - Sweden: 1.36 - Spain: 1.22 - Ireland: 1.11 - Cyprus: 0.76 - Hungary: 0.70 - San Marino: 0.68 - Finland: 0.47 - Bulgaria: 0.43 - Denmark: 0.37 - Israel: 0.32 - Iceland: 0.28 - Montenegro: 0.23 - Andorra: 0.21 - Average total fiscal cost across sample: 2.27 (percent of GDP). - Notes: estimates pertain to household support measures; measures targeting firms and industries are excluded. Some estimates cover 2022 only; others include announced measures for 2023. The calculation of the average treats countries not adopting a category of measures as having a total fiscal cost of zero for that category. *Source: IMF Working Paper No. WP/2022/262 (wpiea2022262-print-pdf).* ### 1. Overview ............................................................................................................ ### 1. Overview ### Key facts and context - The crisis is driven by a sharp reduction in Russian natural gas flows to Europe: Russian pipeline gas exports stood at about 15 percent of their average level in 2019, a drop corresponding to about one-third of European total natural gas consumption. - Europe has largely replaced the reduction in Russian natural gas with alternative sources, but at a high cost. - European natural gas and electricity wholesale prices peaked in late summer at over ten and seven times their early 2021 levels, respectively, before moderating in the fall. - Natural gas prices are expected to be significantly higher than historic averages into the medium term, albeit well below peaks seen in the summer of 2022. ### Wholesale and medium-term price signals - Futures prices as of November 2022 imply: - about 75 percent of the natural gas price shock (defined as the increase in the average price between 2022 and 2019) will be unwound by 2026, while the other 25 percent will be permanent. - medium-term prices settling around €50/MWh for 2026, which is two and half times the €20/MWh price expected before the war. - much below the peak spot price of €300/MWh observed in the summer of 2022. - Wholesale price heterogeneity across countries arises from infrastructure bottlenecks, differences in the electricity generation mix, and diverging price intervention policies (e.g., Spanish and French natural gas prices have frequently been around 50 percent below the benchmark Dutch TTF price). ### Consumer pass-through and retail prices - Prior to the crisis, retail natural gas and electricity prices were roughly equally composed of wholesale energy prices and taxes, levies, and network charges. - The average monthly passthrough for natural gas prices between January and August of 2022 was only about 20 percent. - The speed and degree of passthrough to retail prices have differed significantly across Europe due to contract structure, competition, and government mechanisms to limit passthrough. ### Impact on households and distributional effects - Surging energy prices raised the cost of living of the average European household by just under 6 percent in 2022 relative to early 2021 (directly through energy bills and indirectly via non-energy goods). - The impact is projected to climb to over 7 percent in 2023 on the basis of November 2022 futures prices and passthrough estimates. - The loss in purchasing power is regressive: lower-income households are more affected because they spend a larger share of their budget on necessities, including energy; some middle-income households (not covered by existing social safety programs) are also substantially affected. ### Fiscal and macroeconomic constraints - EU governments announced energy support packages averaging 2.4 percent of GDP for 2022 and 2023 (note: for the full sample of 41 European countries in the survey the average fiscal cost is 2.3 percent of GDP). - About half of the announced fiscal cost comes from untargeted, price-suppressing policies. - These announced costs are significantly higher than what it would have cost governments to fully compensate the bottom 40 percent of households for the increase in the cost of living from the energy price shock. - Public debt in Europe increased sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing fiscal space; with central banks raising policy rates, financing conditions have tightened and borrowing costs have risen for households and governments. ### Recommended policy orientation (principles and practical recommendations) - First-best approach: allow price signals to operate while providing targeted income support to the vulnerable. - Allowing prices to reflect market conditions is critical to incentivize demand adjustment. - Targeting support based on household income and vulnerability (housing type, family size, geographical location) is ideal. - Governments should incentivize energy conservation by allowing price signals to work more strongly than they have so far. - Shift from broad-based to more targeted relief to: - reduce energy demand, - contain inflationary pressures, - preserve fiscal space and avoid loosening overall fiscal policy. - Keep relief well targeted to avoid bolstering aggregate demand excessively and triggering second-round wage-price dynamics. ### Energy use and conservation targets - Households together with Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) directly consume around 25 percent of natural gas in Europe; electricity generation accounts for another 35 percent of total natural gas consumption. - EU countries agreed on voluntary national consumption reduction targets of 15 percent for natural gas and 5 percent for electricity through the first quarter of 2023 compared to their average consumption in the same period during the five preceding years. - Analysis in Box 1: European households could have saved about 50 percent more gas in the first three quarters of 2022 than they actually did, corresponding to about 2 percent of total European gas consumption in the pre-pandemic years, if passthrough from wholesale to retail natural gas prices had been more complete. ### Implementation challenges for targeted measures - Technical and political constraints can impede rapid deployment of targeted, non-price-distorting measures: - Information/data gaps and administrative costs: lack of joint data on household income and/or energy consumption—especially for households outside social safety nets—hinders identification of vulnerable households. - Confidentiality or privacy laws (example: within federations) and technical constraints (e.g., individual tax filing systems that lack household-level income data) limit governments’ ability to target support. - Lack of information on households’ bank accounts complicates delivery of transfers to those outside existing social benefit programs. - Administrative resource constraints reduce the capacity to design and launch new means-tested programs quickly. - In some cases, governments have successfully expanded safety nets or used online platforms to invite applications; outcomes differ across countries. ### Structure of the paper (remainder) - Section 2: update on energy price developments in Europe. - Section 3: set of principles to guide design of household relief policies. - Section 4: summary of measures taken by European governments to cushion the impact on households so far. - Section 5: conclusion. *Source: IMF Working Papers — 1. Overview.* ### Box 1: Estimated Foregone Gas Savings ### Box 1: Estimated Foregone Gas Savings ### Counterfactual approach and scenarios - Assessment relies on constructing counterfactual retail prices that would have prevailed without price-suppressing measures; this is complicated by: - pre-existing institutional and legal differences across Europe that influence passthrough from wholesale to retail prices; and - the large magnitude of the current shock, which is outside the historical range and implies historical passthrough rates may not be a good guide. - Two exercises provide an upper and lower bound on foregone gas savings: - Full and fast passthrough scenario: compare observed retail prices with prices under a hypothetical full and fast passthrough of TTF prices to retail prices across Europe. This likely overestimates the impact of new measures because pre-existing institutional features and smoothing would have led to less than full passthrough anyway. - Historical passthrough scenario: compare observed retail prices with prices implied by historical country-specific passthrough estimates. This likely underestimates the impact of new measures because the large current shock likely makes historical smoothing infeasible without severe solvency implications for energy providers. - For each price scenario, a range of elasticities is used to recover the impact on gas demand: -0.1 to -0.3. ### Quantitative findings - Estimated additional household gas savings under the two scenarios (2022 Q1–Q3): - Full passthrough to end users: gas savings could have been higher by 5–15 percent of consumption. - Historically observed rates of passthrough: gas savings could have been higher by 1–3 percent of consumption. - Mid-point calculation and implications: - Using the mid-point of the above range (8 percent), a rough estimate suggests household gas savings might be 50 percent higher than they have been so far. - Households account for around 25 percent of EU gas demand. - This implies an aggregate drop in European natural gas demand of 2 percent of pre-war consumption, contributing to the EU’s 15 percent consumption reduction target. ### Policy implications and interpretation - There is room to increase household energy savings by moving closer to high levels of passthrough. - The choice of measures affects incentives: - Measures that suppress retail prices limit demand adjustment and can reduce energy savings. - Historical passthrough patterns may understate current feasible passthrough given the unprecedented shock and solvency pressures on energy providers. - The elasticity range (-0.1 to -0.3) is used to translate price differences into demand responses; evidence suggests the elasticity in Germany could have been towards the upper end of this range during the current shock. *Source: Box 1, "Estimated Foregone Gas Savings", IMF Working Paper (wpiea2022262-print-pdf).* ### 6.5 eurocents per KWh for up to 2.75 MWh per month for natural gas. During October 2022–March 2023, ### Targeted, Implementable, and Practical Energy Relief Measures for Households in Europe (Working Paper No. WP/2022/262) ### Key measures and country examples - 6.5 eurocents per KWh for up to 2.75 MWh per month for natural gas. - Estonia: compensate households for 80 percent of the price of natural gas above €80 per MWh for natural gas consumption of up to 2600 KWh in consumption per month. - Austria: announced an electricity price cap at 10 eurocents per KWh for the period December 2022-June 2024, applied to 80 percent of the electricity consumed by the household. - Poland: announced in September 2022 a cap on the 2023 electricity prices for household consumption of up to 2000 KWh, for which about two-thirds of households are eligible. - Netherlands: announced a cap on the price of consumption for each household or SME (“small consumers”) up to a certain consumption volume, set at the median consumption volume of these consumers. ### Findings on impacts and distributive consequences - Surging energy prices are projected to raise the cost of living of the average European household by around 6 percent this year relative to early 2021. - Lower-income households tend to have the greatest relative loss in purchasing power and the least means to cope with large increases in the cost-of-living. - Some lower middle-income families not covered by existing social safety programs may need assistance to prevent energy poverty. ### Policy assessment and recommendations - First-best: let price signals operate and provide targeted relief to vulnerable households. - Practical challenge: institutional, political, and technical constraints have made targeted support difficult, prompting broad price-suppressing measures that are fiscally costly and reduce incentives to save energy. - Second-best implementable options: - Rebates on energy bills that are not linked to current volume of consumption (to avoid distorting price signals). - Block tariffs that preserve price signals for consumption above a certain threshold. - Make relief subject to income taxation or introduce one-off solidarity taxes on higher-income households to limit fiscal costs and enhance progressivity. - Offset increased spending on energy support measures with fiscal tightening in other areas to support monetary policy in curbing inflation. - Institutional recommendation: urgently develop comprehensive information systems on household incomes and energy use to enable better targeting of future energy-cost relief and to support the green transition. ### Consumer energy price forecasts and passthrough assumptions - Forecast inputs: futures prices for Brent oil (liquid fuels), Dutch TTF market futures (natural gas), country-specific electricity futures, and average Newcastle and Rotterdam futures (coal). - Passthrough defined as the ratio between one-year HICP inflation and wholesale price inflation for each energy good; passthrough coefficients have generally trended upwards in 2022. - Forecast approach: - For countries in the top 20th percentile of observed passthrough, assume maximum observed passthrough holds over the projection horizon. - For others, assume passthrough will surpass their observed maximum and reach coefficients seen in high-passthrough countries, reflecting delayed passthrough from fixed-term contracts. - Projected median increases (relative to January 2021): - Consumer natural gas prices in 2023: 140 percent (median projected increase). - Consumer electricity prices in 2023: 55 percent (median projected increase). - Heterogeneity: natural gas price in 2023 ranges between a quarter higher and quintuple that of January 2021 across countries. - Liquid fuels: with wholesale oil and coal futures edging down in 2023 and relatively high passthrough, consumer liquid fuel inflation prices are projected to moderate next year but remain about 30–40 percent higher than their early-2019 levels. ### Typology of country measures - Price-suppressing policies: - Broad-based cuts to excise duties or VAT rates on energy products (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Romania). - Caps on retail prices of energy products (France, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, U.K. for natural gas, and Austria, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia for electricity). - Energy bill discounts and fee reductions; discounted social tariffs for lower-income households (Belgium, Greece, Italy, U.K.). - Block tariffs for electricity (Austria, Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland). - Income support to households: - Cash transfers (Austria, Cyprus, Czech Rep, France, Germany, Spain, U.K.). - Energy bill vouchers (Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden). - Energy efficiency grants/subsidies for vulnerable households or broader coverage (Lithuania, Luxembourg, Sweden). - Examples of targeted design: expanding coverage of existing social assistance programs (Belgium, Luxembourg); progressive or income-taxable lump-sum transfers (Cyprus, Germany). - Fiscal cost range: fiscal costs of household support measures, including price-suppressing policies, range from less than 1 to close to 6 percent of GDP in European countries. ### Fiscal cost evidence (Table A2 highlights) - Selected country total fiscal costs of household support measures in 2022 and 2023 (percent of GDP): - Malta: 5.64 - United Kingdom: 5.07 - France: 4.25 - Slovakia: 4.14 - Austria: 4.07 - Greece: 4.05 - Lithuania: 3.77 - Kosovo: 3.58 - Poland: 3.57 - North Macedonia: 3.10 - Moldova: 3.08 - Serbia: 3.06 - Romania: 2.86 - Italy: 2.82 - Croatia: 2.73 - Netherlands: 2.71 - Portugal: 2.68 - Albania: 2.65 - Turkey: 2.55 - Germany: 2.54 - Luxembourg: 2.26 - Czech Republic: 2.20 - Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2.03 - Norway: 1.77 - Estonia: 1.72 - Belgium: 1.62 - Slovenia: 1.55 - Sweden: 1.36 - Spain: 1.22 - Ireland: 1.11 - Cyprus: 0.76 - Hungary: 0.70 - San Marino: 0.68 - Finland: 0.47 - Bulgaria: 0.43 - Denmark: 0.37 - Israel: 0.32 - Iceland: 0.28 - Montenegro: 0.23 - Andorra: 0.21 - Average total fiscal cost across sample: 2.27 (percent of GDP). - Notes: estimates pertain to household support measures; measures targeting firms and industries are excluded. Some estimates cover 2022 only; others include announced measures for 2023. The calculation of the average treats countries not adopting a category of measures as having a total fiscal cost of zero for that category. *International Monetary Fund — Targeted, Implementable, and Practical Energy Relief Measures for Households in Europe (Working Paper No. WP/2022/262)* --- _Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/wp/2022/english/wpiea2022262-print-pdf.pdf_