Some news stories are worth reading for what they don't say. On 4 June 2026 the Council of the EU authorised the European Commission to open negotiations with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, with a view to extending the EU's "roam like at home" area to all six. It was reported, reasonably enough, as free roaming coming to the Balkans. What it actually is: permission to start talking, six times over, about a thing that has to be negotiated, ratified and implemented country by country before a single phone bill changes.
What was actually decided
The Commission proposed opening the talks on 25 February 2026. The Council signed off on 4 June. What follows is not one negotiation but six: a separate sectoral agreement with each partner, anchored to the Stabilisation and Association Agreement that already governs its relationship with the EU.
Each of the six then has to fully align with and implement the EU roaming rulebook — the acquis — on its own side. The Commission assesses whether that has actually happened, and only after a positive assessment can the joint bodies set up under those agreements decide to open the roaming markets reciprocally. Montenegro has moved first: in early October 2026 the Commission said it has joined "roam like at home", while negotiations continue with the other five. The wider goal is to eliminate roaming surcharges across the region by 2028.
None of that is a scheduled date. It's a sequence of conditions, and countries move through conditions at different speeds.
This is not the region's first roaming deal
It helps to know that two things have already happened, because they're easy to mistake for the thing being negotiated now.
Roaming charges between the six Western Balkan countries themselves were abolished in July 2021, under a regional agreement signed within the Berlin Process. That's real, and it's been in force for years — but it governs what these countries' operators charge each other's subscribers, which is a different question from what happens to a line from elsewhere.
Separately, dozens of EU and Western Balkan operators signed a declaration at the 2022 Tirana summit committing to step retail data roaming prices down over several years, starting on 1 October 2023. That one does touch EU–Balkans travel, but it's a voluntary price glidepath rather than a legal entitlement, and what any individual operator charges you within it still varies. Cheaper is not the same as included.
The part the headline leaves out
Here's the caveat that outlasts every stage of this process: "roam like at home" is a rule about where your line was issued, not about where you are standing.
The area covers the EU, the EEA countries — Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway — and, more recently, Moldova and Ukraine. If your SIM or eSIM was issued by an operator inside that area, you carry your domestic allowance across it, subject to fair-use limits. If it wasn't, the regulation has never had anything to say about your bill, and extending the area doesn't change that.
So if you're flying into Tirana or Belgrade on a plan from the United States, Brazil, Japan, Australia, India, the UK or anywhere else outside the zone, the 2028 goal is not a date on your calendar. The Balkans remain a roaming destination for that line whether the talks finish early, late or not at all. It's the same structural point behind the non-EU pockets inside Europe — the map that decides your phone bill is narrower than the map of the continent, and it's drawn around operators rather than borders.
What's true on the ground this autumn
Outside Montenegro, the old rules still apply across the region this autumn. That is exactly the patchwork a country-by-country process produces: for a line issued inside the zone, a two-week trip through Montenegro, Albania and North Macedonia now crosses borders where the rules differ — Montenegro on the new terms, its neighbours still on the old ones. And how quickly each operator applies a change on your bill is its own question, so check yours before you lean on it.
That transitional messiness is the practical case for not depending on the rules at all.
What to do instead
A VamosData eSIM is priced before you fly and doesn't care which agreements have been ratified by the time you land:
- Confirm your phone supports eSIM on the device checker — that's a property of the handset, not of any plan.
- Pick a plan for where you're actually going on destinations: a single country if you're staying put, or a regional Balkans plan if the trip crosses borders. How to choose a regional plan walks through which fits.
- Install it over your home Wi-Fi before departure with the iOS or Android guide.
- Keep your usual SIM in the phone for calls and texts, with its data roaming switched off — the habit from the avoiding roaming charges checklist, and the one that stops a surprise arriving after the holiday.
The negotiation is genuinely good news, and in a few years it will make a real difference to travellers on lines issued inside the zone. Until then — and permanently, for everyone else — the Balkans are somewhere you arrange your own data before you get on the plane.