EU roaming in overseas territories: the outermost regions are in, the rest are not

Distance does not decide it, the treaties do

The European Commission lists where roam like at home applies: the 27 EU countries, the three other members of the European Economic Area, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, and, by later agreement, Ukraine and Moldova. The question for a remote island is therefore whether it counts as part of one of those countries for EU purposes.

BEREC, the body of European telecom regulators, answers it in its guidelines on the roaming regulation. The rules, it says, also apply to communications made and received within the outermost regions of the EU, and the territorial scope of the Union is set by Article 355 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. It goes as far as advising mobile operators to consult the treaty.

That article sorts overseas places into groups with very different treatment. Two of them matter for your phone bill: the outermost regions and the overseas countries and territories. The general rules, with fair use and the rest, are in EU roam like at home explained.

The nine outermost regions: roaming like at home

• Spain: the Canary Islands.
• Portugal: Madeira and the Azores.
• France: Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion, Mayotte and Saint-Martin.

Article 349 of the treaty names these regions and Article 355 applies the treaties to them. The Commission describes them as an integral part of the EU and its single market. For a phone plan from any EU country, that means the same treatment as on the mainland, under your operator's fair use policy.

The list has changed over time, which explains some old forum answers. A European Council decision added Mayotte, and another removed Saint-Barthélemy, which became an overseas territory instead. For the Canaries, the islands and their networks are covered in our Canary Islands guide. Visitors from outside the EU are charged international roaming in all of these places, as anywhere else in the EU; for them, there are country pages such as Guadeloupe or Réunion.

The thirteen overseas countries and territories: outside

• Linked to Denmark: Greenland.
• Linked to the Netherlands: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten.
• Linked to France: French Polynesia, the French Southern and Antarctic Lands, New Caledonia, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and Wallis and Futuna.

These are the territories the Commission lists as associated with the EU. In its own words, they are neither part of the EU territory nor of the EU single market; the treaty gives them special association arrangements instead. BEREC points operators to a Court of Justice judgment on telecom services in these territories when it explains the scope of the regulation.

In practice, an EU plan has no right to home prices there. Your operator decides: some include a few of these places in a zone of their own, others bill them like any country outside Europe. Look for the exact name in your operator's roaming list before you fly, and keep data roaming off on your line until you have.

The Faroe Islands, Åland and other special cases

The Faroe Islands are the clearest exclusion. Article 355 says plainly that the treaties do not apply to them, so they are outside EU roaming even though they belong to the Danish realm, like Greenland. That catches people on the ferry from Iceland or Denmark; the article on Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein covers that route, and there is a Faroe Islands page for data there.

The Åland Islands, between Finland and Sweden, go the other way: the treaty applies to them through a protocol of Finland's accession, so they are inside. So are Ceuta and Melilla, which are part of Spain; the catch there is the Moroccan masts next door, explained in phone on a Moroccan network in Spain.

Gibraltar has been outside EU roaming since the United Kingdom left, as the Gibraltar guide explains. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican have their own article.

One island, two answers: Saint-Martin and Sint Maarten

The Caribbean island of Saint Martin shows the rule at its sharpest. The northern half, Saint-Martin, is French and an outermost region, so EU roaming applies there. The southern half, Sint Maarten, is linked to the Netherlands and is an overseas country, so it does not. The two halves share a land border.

Phones choose a mast by signal, not by the side of the border you are standing on. Near the line, an EU phone on the French side can end up on a network from the Dutch side, and its data would then be billed outside roam like at home. Two habits prevent it: pick a French network by hand in your phone's network settings while you are close to the border, and keep data roaming off on your line when you do not need it. How manual selection works is in manual vs automatic network selection.

Saint-Barthélemy, a short ferry ride away, is an overseas territory too.

French lines get something extra

There is one national exception worth knowing. ARCEP, the French telecoms regulator, said that the roaming provisions also apply to users travelling within France, which includes mainland and overseas France, and its list of overseas places included Saint-Barthélemy and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon alongside the outermost regions.

That rule comes from France, not from the EU regulation, and it concerns French customers. A plan from Spain, Italy or Germany gets nothing from it, so in Saint-Barthélemy or Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon it depends on what that operator offers.

For anyone else heading to a territory outside the EU's roaming area, the choice is the usual one: your operator's paid roaming, a local SIM or a travel eSIM for that destination. A data eSIM keeps your number on your own SIM for calls and texts; Snoozim, for example, has packs for some of them, such as the Faroe Islands and Gibraltar. The EU roaming map shows the borders at a glance.