Romania recorded the European Union’s lowest food and non-alcoholic beverage price level in 2025, while households devoted a larger-than-average share of spending to the category in 2024, Eurostat data show.
Eurostat’s price-level index set the EU average at 100 points. Romania scored 80, while Luxembourg had the highest level among EU countries at 122. The figures compare price levels and do not account for differences in income or wages.
Household expenditure data show a different comparison. Food and non-alcoholic beverages made up 23.1% of spending in Romania in 2024, against 13.2% across the EU. The category represented 9.3% of household expenditure in Luxembourg. Across the bloc, housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels accounted for 23.6% of spending that year.
The price index and expenditure shares measure separate things: one compares prices between countries, while the other records the portion of household spending allocated to a category. Prof. Jeremiás Máté Balogh of Corvinus University told Euronews Business that “lower prices do not necessarily mean greater affordability.”
Euronews Business also reported that Balogh and Ilaria Benedetti of the University of Tuscia cited wages, energy, rents, transport, taxes, and market and logistics factors as contributors to price differences. The interview did not provide a quantified breakdown of how much each factor affects prices in individual countries.
For a wider European comparison, Numbeo’s mid-2026 Groceries Index listed Switzerland at 109.5 points, Iceland at 106.3, Norway at 89.4 and Moldova at 33.1. Numbeo’s index uses New York City as its 100-point reference and weighted prices for grocery items. Its figures therefore use a different baseline from Eurostat’s EU-average index and cannot be directly compared with Eurostat’s scores.
