Ever since the big RIRs (like RIPE) have run out of IPv4 addresses to allocate - which was a couple years ago (ARIN was out 2015; and RIPE ran out end of last year - and that was already with quite restrictive allocation policies).

I got a hold of a few addresses for free last year, but this year it was clear that RIPE wanted members to charge for IPs.

I see that RIPE is currently only giving out a /24 for free to those who haven't received an allocation before, so my bad.

Even before the end of last year it was limited to exactly one last /22 per LIR for a few years already. The pool that was set aside for that last allocation was depleted at the end of last year.

Now they are limited to handing out /24's that are returned to them to hand out to new ISPs (since going IPv6-only is still not quite possible..).