Every six hours the power goes off in Kosovo. It’s the first country on the continent to suffer rolling outages as the energy crisis escalates.

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Soaring international energy prices have brought power blackouts to Europe as Kosovo said it could no longer afford to import electricity. Consumers in the Balkan state have been told they will be allowed six hours of power at a time, punctuated by two-hour breaks.

The energy rationing, which has no scheduled end date and was announced on Monday, is a response to high wholesale market prices, which mean Kosovo cannot afford to import electricity. Its domestic generation capacity, almost all of which comes from heavily-polluting coal-fired power stations, is only enough to meet around two-thirds of demand.

While Kosovo is one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries, the move to impose scheduled outages will add to fears that other European nations could be forced to follow suit. However, the situation in Kosovo is particularly acute because about half of the country’s generators are shut for regular pre-winter maintenance.

Kosovo’s parliament declared a state of emergency early this month, giving it the ability to introduce drastic measures including blackouts to cope with the energy crisis. Similar power cuts were introduced in December, when consumption rose to record levels as temperatures dropped below freezing.

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