Power trading in the Western Balkans has never simply been about electricity. It is about geography, interconnection politics, hydrology, capital, algorithmic capability and the ability to manage risk across multiple fragmented but interdependent markets. Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro sit at the centre of this landscape, not as large demand centres but as strategically positioned corridors where price signals from Italy, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Hungary meet and get translated into trades, spreads and ultimately profits. Behind the scenes, a small number of highly capable regional and European trading houses dominate the structure of liquidity, while a long tail of local suppliers, mid-tier traders and state companies form the ecosystem around them. Asking who “really controls” power trading in the Western Balkans means unpacking how this layered system works.
The first layer is the institutional one. Without transmission system operators, exchanges and regulators, there is no market to speak of. Albania has ALPEX, North Macedonia has MEMO, Montenegro has BELEN working with Nord Pool technology and COTEE as market operator, while TSOs like OST, MEPSO and CGES control access to cross-border capacity. These institutions provide the infrastructure and the rulebook; they define how capacity is auctioned, how day-ahead markets clear and how balancing responsibilities are handled. Yet institutional power is not the same thing as market power. Institutions create the arena, but it is the traders who actually move volumes, carry risks and create liquidity. And in this respect, the Western Balkans has a very clear hierarchy.
At the top sit the Tier-1 trading houses, the names that come up in almost every serious conversation about electricity trading in South-East Europe: EFT (Energy Financing Team), GEN-I, Axpo, Statkraft trading operations, Danske Commodities and Alpiq, often joined by other sophisticated players such as Vitol, MET or Interenergo depending on the corridor. What makes this group dominant is not just capital strength, but breadth of presence. These firms do not operate in one market; they run positions simultaneously across Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Greece and Italy. They are exchange members in multiple hubs, licensed traders in multiple jurisdictions, and counterparties trusted by utilities, industry and other traders alike. That breadth is power, because it allows them to arbitrage price differentials, absorb hydrological or thermal shocks and monetise volatility in a way smaller players simply cannot.
Take Albania as a starting point. Albania is a hydro-driven system whose entire market behaviour depends on water. In wet years, the country exports aggressively, in dry years it becomes structurally short and imports heavily. This creates enormous swings in volume and price, and those swings require traders capable of managing weather risk on a regional scale. That is precisely why houses like EFT, GEN-I, Statkraft and Axpo are so influential here: they can hedge Albanian exposure using Serbian, Greek, Bulgarian or Italian markets, they can move power through Montenegro or Kosovo depending on capacity, and they understand the hydrology well enough to make forward judgments. Local Albanian trading firms exist and some of them are increasingly professional, but structurally they rely on the price formation created by the big regional traders and on counterparties with enough balance sheet to handle volume in bad hydrological years. Albania’s emergence of ALPEX as a day-ahead platform has increased transparency and participation, but it has not changed the basic reality that the largest liquidity influence still sits with the region’s heavyweight traders.
North Macedonia’s story is different but leads to the same conclusion. North Macedonia is a system with mixed generation, legacy thermal dependence, growing renewable ambitions and a strong cross-border positioning between Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. Its day-ahead market under MEMO has brought remarkable transparency compared to previous years, but the participant list itself reveals who matters. State producers and suppliers anchor physical volumes, EVN’s companies remain critical players due to their retail and operational roles, yet in the middle of all this stand the traders whose businesses are built around cross-border optimisation: GEN-I, EFT, ETMT and others who can extract value from Macedonian pricing by linking it to surrounding hubs. Add to that the pan-European giants like Axpo, Alpiq, Statkraft Trading and Danske Commodities, which may not always be loudly visible but are structurally embedded into regional price discovery through their positions in neighbouring exchanges, and you get a market where real influence lies not with one national champion, but with those capable of integrating North Macedonia into a broader SEE portfolio.
Montenegro, meanwhile, punches far above its size. The country is not a large consumer, but it is a gateway. The HVDC cable to Italy completely changed its strategic role, effectively connecting Western Balkan generation to one of Europe’s most important power markets. Montenegro also sits on top of multiple 400 kV interconnections toward Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Albania, making it a transit and optimisation point. When BELEN’s day-ahead market became operational with Nord Pool’s platform backing it, it naturally attracted a disproportionate concentration of serious global and European traders. Vitol joining as a participant said a lot about how the market is perceived. Alongside Vitol, you find EFT, GEN-I, other leading regionals and usually the familiar European trading houses using Montenegro not merely for local retail purposes, but as a strategic bridge between SEE volatility and Italian price dynamics. EPCG still matters domestically, but the moment you look at cross-border positioning and spreads, it is the pan-regional traders who shape liquidity.
This Tier-1 group controls the core because it controls capability. One capability is balance sheet. Power trading in SEE can be capital intensive, especially when volatility spikes or when utilities need large import volumes under stress conditions. Another is portfolio integration. Statkraft can hedge from internal production across multiple countries. Axpo, Alpiq and Danske Commodities operate highly sophisticated risk, quantitative and algo desks connected to dozens of European markets. EFT and GEN-I have deep SEE knowledge, operational resilience and years of contractual and infrastructural relationships across the region. Together, these attributes allow them to be the dependable counterparties when utilities, industrial consumers or local traders need certainty.
Below them sits the mid-tier. These are credible regional traders, often licensed in multiple SEE countries, active on the local exchanges, and capable of handling real volume, but without the same continental reach or capital depth as the big six to eight names. In North Macedonia, firms like Interenergo, ETMT, Duferco’s local structure and Renewable Energy Supply form a meaningful part of this layer. In Albania and Montenegro, there are local suppliers and specialised trading boutiques operating around industrial load, renewable portfolios or niche bilateral deals. They are essential for market depth and competition, they increase liquidity and they often serve as bridges between domestic producers or consumers and the larger houses. But structurally, they are price takers in a system where the regional big traders and state entities drive the major pricing dynamics.
State utilities and operators form another layer of control, though of a different nature. EPCG in Montenegro, ESM in North Macedonia, KESH in Albania, together with TSOs OST, MEPSO and CGES, are not speculative traders, but they decide when their countries import or export, when assets run, when maintenance happens, and how they engage with exchanges and bilateral partners. When a country like North Macedonia needs to cover winter demand or when Albania faces a dry season, the decisions these entities make directly create trading opportunities and determine which private counterparties benefit. In that sense, they do not “control” trading in the commercial sense, but they control the real-world physical context within which trading occurs. And since the Western Balkans remains politically sensitive around electricity, governments indirectly sit in this layer as well.
Another source of power is technological sophistication. Electricity trading today is not simply phone calls and bilateral contracts. Short-term markets, intraday trading and cross-border arbitrage increasingly depend on automation, data analytics and algorithmic execution. This is where firms like Danske Commodities or some of the newer digital trading entrants hold an edge. They can respond faster to price movements, capture more of the small but frequent opportunities, and use weather, hydrology and system data in ways that less digitised traders cannot match. That does not mean pure-algo shops dominate SEE, because this is still a region where relationships, regulation and local knowledge matter enormously. But it does mean that the blend of algorithmic capability with regional grounding is becoming the new competitive benchmark.
Market coupling and European integration also shape who controls power. As Western Balkan markets gradually integrate with EU power market structures, the advantage shifts toward traders who already operate deeply within the EU system. Montenegro’s alignment with EU energy rules, the growing integration of ALPEX and future coupling dynamics, and Macedonia’s ongoing alignment with European frameworks all point toward increasing penetration by Europe’s established trading houses rather than isolationist national champions. Over time, liquidity gravitates toward firms that are comfortable in both EU and SEE environments. That again reinforces the relevance of Axpo, Alpiq, Statkraft, Danske Commodities and others like them.
If you try to think in market share terms, you quickly hit a wall because none of these countries publishes transparent company-by-company trading shares. But thinking in power-structure terms is more insightful anyway. In practical reality, most experts and practitioners would describe the region as a concentrated top tier accounting for a very large share of meaningful wholesale and cross-border activity, supported by a broad and increasingly professional secondary layer of local and regional players. The number of true “price makers” is relatively small. The number of participants is large. Those two facts coexist.
So who really controls power trading in the Western Balkans? Control is shared, but not equally. Institutions control the rules and frameworks. State utilities and TSOs control the physical backbone and the circumstances under which power must be imported or exported. But the day-to-day reality of liquidity, cross-border optimisation, price discovery and risk absorption is disproportionately shaped by a core cluster of regional and European trading houses: EFT, GEN-I, Axpo, Statkraft’s trading operations, Alpiq, Danske Commodities, and a handful of others that consistently act across Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and the surrounding markets. They are the ones with the portfolios big enough to matter, the algorithms sharp enough to respond, the capital strong enough to carry stress, and the geographic reach broad enough to turn fragmented national systems into a single trading canvas.
In a region moving slowly but steadily toward deeper integration with the European power market, it is unlikely that this structure will fundamentally change soon. If anything, as day-ahead and intraday platforms deepen, as interconnections strengthen and as renewables expand, the importance of those who can manage multi-market complexity will grow even further. The Western Balkans may be made up of small countries, but the trading game around them is very much a big-league affair, and its real power centres are already clearly visible to anyone who knows where to look.