MEPs meeting within the Energy Committee adopted a report putting forward Parliament's priorities for the European Energy Strategy 2011-2020. In this resport, the Committee urged the European Commission to fully exploit existing EU energy legislation and projects and put energy efficiency as a key priority of Europe's energy strategy for 2011-2020.

In a report intended to contribute to a forthcoming European Commission paper on energy strategy priorities for 2011-2020, Parliament's Energy Committee urged that the EU should better exploit energy efficiency, as a cost-effective way to cut energy dependency, combat climate change, create jobs and counteract increases in energy bills. This report adopted in Committee will be put to plenary session in November.

The Parliament also calls on the Commission and Member States to step up work on EU southern gas corridor projects and especially the Nabucco Asia to Europe gas pipeline, to promote Mediterranean Solar Plan projects DESERTEC (clean power from deserts) and TRANSGREEN (low carbon and renewable energy networks) and also to promote regional projects such as the “Mediterranean Ring” (grid interconnection) and the “Baltic Interconnection Project”.

As for the evaluation of the existing legislation implementation, the Committee considers that if this evaluation reveals unsatisfactory results, the European Energy Action Plan should include a commitment by the Commission to propose further EU measures for Member States. These measure would include individual efficiency targets designed to bring about overall energy savings of at least 20% at EU level, but taking into account relative starting positions and national circumstances.

The report says Energy Community membership should be extended to more EU neighbouring countries, and notably those in the Eastern Partnership. Diversifying supply sources could help in dealing with future supply crises, say MEPs, who stress the importance of further expanding the European liquid natural gas fleet, and ask the Commission and Council to work closely with NATO to align EU and NATO energy security strategies.