Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on April 2, 2026
2 min readLast updated: April 2, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleOn April 2, 2026, the Czech government, led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, announced plans to cap fuel retailers’ margins and cut excise taxes on petrol and diesel in an effort to curb rising fuel prices amid global market turmoil.
PRAGUE, April 2 (Reuters) - The Czech government agreed to cap fuel retailers' margins and lower the excise tax to limit fuel price rises, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Thursday.
Other governments in central Europe have also taken measures to limit the fuel price impact stemming from conflict in the Middle East and rising oil prices.
Babis told a news conference that there was "chaos" caused by a lack of coordination among individual countries in central Europe which have been adopting various measures to limit the fallout from the energy crisis.
He said his government will start price controls from April 8 by capping the margin on diesel and gasoline at 2.50 crowns ($0.12) and lowering the excise tax on diesel - currently at 9.95 crowns per litre - by 2.35 crowns.
A maximum price will be set daily under the system, he said.
"We think this is a measure that should fundamentally help everyone, of course citizens, companies and the economy," Babis said.
Fuel prices have jumped since U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran started on February 28.
In the Czech Republic, the average price per litre for gasoline is up around 8 crowns at 41.60 crowns since the conflict started. Diesel has risen by around 15 crowns to 48.33 per litre, CTK news agency reported, citing data from fleet service provider CCS.
The government already took the step of releasing 100,000 tonnes of crude from state reserves for the country's sole refiner Orlen Unipetrol, owned by Polish group Orlen.
Orlen and Hungary's MOL are large fuel retailers in the country with refinery systems.
Besides pressure from global markets, where oil has risen to over $100 a barrel, central Europe has also seen an outage of Russian oil supplies to Slovakia and Hungary due to an outage on the Druzhba pipeline in Ukraine. Kyiv said a Russian strike hit pipeline equipment.
($1 = 21.2730 Czech crowns)
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
The Czech government agreed to cap fuel retailers' margins and lower the excise tax to help limit fuel price increases.
The government is capping margins to control fuel price rises amid chaos from the Middle East conflict and rising oil prices.
Yes, other governments in central Europe have also implemented measures to limit the impact of rising fuel prices.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis announced the measures at a news conference.
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