EU electricity market integration progresses but significant benefits remain untapped

Integrated electricity markets are central to a secure, affordable and sustainable EU energy system. By enabling cross-border trade, they increase competition, improve affordability for consumers, support more renewables and strengthen security of supply and system resilience.

The ACER 2026 Monitoring Report published today evaluates progress and potential benefits of EU electricity market integration, covering key developments across all market timeframes, as well as cross-zonal capacity and congestion management. 

What trends did ACER’s monitoring find? 

ACER’s monitoring finds progress:

• Cross-border trade generates about €32 billion in economic surplus each year in the day-ahead market alone. Further integration over all markets could deliver at least an additional €4 billion per year. 
• Day-ahead trading has largely moved to 15-minute products. Introduced on 1 October 2025 to better reflect changing system conditions, they now account for almost 90% of all electricity traded in the day-ahead market. 
• Interest is growing in pairing renewables with storage. Power purchase agreements (long-term contracts between sellers and buyers) increasingly combine renewable generation with energy storage, supporting investment in renewable energy and increasing flexibility.

However, significant challenges remain: 

• Forward market liquidity remains concentrated in a few bidding zones and trading activity falls rapidly for electricity contracts traded beyond one year-ahead.
• Price differences between bidding zones are widening, increasing the importance of making sufficient transmission capacity available for cross-zonal trade.
• The availability of cross-zonal capacity is still lagging. The requirement to make at least 70% of capacity available for trading electricity across borders is not yet fully implemented across the EU. Markets that operate closer to real time, such as intraday and balancing markets, are particularly affected by limited access to cross-zonal trade. 
• The cost of managing grid congestion is rising. It reached €5.4 billion in 2025, up from €4.3 billion in 2024, with a growing share linked to voltage control following the Iberian blackout.

Looking ahead

Market integration already brings clear benefits, but its full value has yet to be realised. As renewable generation grows, cross-zonal trading, particularly close to real time, will become increasingly valuable. Further integration and the full application of existing rules, such as the minimum 70% requirement, would deliver significant gains for consumers in the coming years.