Calling another EU country from home is not roaming

Same number, two prices

Take a Spanish mobile line and the French mobile number of the landlord of a flat in Lyon. Call it from Madrid and you are making what EU law calls an intra-EU communication: a call that starts in the country of your provider and ends on a number from another EU country's numbering plan. Your operator charges its own price for that, within a cap.

Make the same call after landing in Lyon and it becomes a roaming call. The roaming regulation, Regulation (EU) 2022/612, forbids any surcharge on top of the domestic price for calls made on a visited network to any network in the EU, so it is billed like a national call in Spain and comes out of the same allowance. The European Commission gives the same example with a Polish customer in Belgium: calls back to Poland or to any other EU country cost what they would at home.

What the intra-EU cap covers

• Calls and texts from your home country to fixed or mobile numbers of another EU country.
• Consumers only: the Commission states that business customers are excluded.
• Tariffs charged wholly or partly by use, including minutes deducted one by one from an allowance.
• A maximum of 0.19 euros per minute and 0.06 euros per text, excluding VAT, which is then added at your country's rate.

The cap comes from Article 5a of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120, added by Regulation (EU) 2018/1971. Bundles that include a set volume of calls to other EU countries for a fixed price are not capped, but you can switch to a capped per-minute tariff: the switch has to be made within one working day, free of charge, without changing the rest of your contract.

Why your unlimited calls may stop at the border

An unlimited domestic allowance is about numbers from your own country. A call from home to a German or Italian number is a different service, so whether it is included, and at what price, depends on how your tariff treats calls to other EU countries. Look for an international or EU zone in the price list, not for the roaming section.

The cap only protects you from very high per-minute prices; it does not make those calls free. EU law already plans the next step: the Gigabit Infrastructure Act lets operators drop the surcharge voluntarily, under a fair use policy, and foresees that they stop charging different prices for domestic and intra-EU communications once the Commission adopts safeguards on fair use, sustainability and fraud. Until your contract says otherwise, assume a call from home to another EU country is charged separately.

Abroad, the rule is more generous

While you are roaming in another EU country, the roaming regulation covers calls made from the visited network to numbers in any EU country, the one you are visiting included. Calling a restaurant in Lisbon from Lisbon on a Spanish line costs the same as a national call in Spain, and so does calling your bank in Madrid. Receiving calls carries no surcharge either, whoever calls you.

Two limits still apply. Your operator can apply a fair use policy to cheap or unlimited plans, as our guide to EU roaming fair use explains. And all of this stops at the EU and EEA border: in the UK or Switzerland your operator sets the price, as our guides on roaming in the UK and Switzerland show.

Calls that neither rule protects

• Calls from home to numbers outside the EU, such as the UK, the United States or Morocco.
• Calls to special-rate numbers, whose price for the service itself is outside both rules.
• Calls from business lines, which the intra-EU cap excludes.
• Calls made through a ship's or plane's own network, which the roaming caps do not cover.

For these, the only price that counts is the one in your operator's tariff. Special numbers deserve their own check: a number that is free at home may not be free from abroad, as we explain in calling special numbers while roaming. And on board, the safest setting is flight mode with Wi-Fi back on.

Cheaper ways to call another EU country

If you call people in another EU country often, three things help. First, read the line in your tariff for calls to other EU countries and compare it with the cap: if you pay per minute, you should never pay more than 0.19 euros plus VAT. Second, if you have a bundle that no longer suits you, ask for the per-minute tariff, which must be applied within one working day.

Third, use an internet call when the other person has the same app. WhatsApp and FaceTime calls run over Wi-Fi or mobile data rather than minutes, which also makes them the usual way to call home from outside Europe. A data eSIM such as Snoozim's has no number of its own, so it carries those app calls while your usual line keeps making normal ones; our guide on calling home with a data-only eSIM shows what works.