Addressing members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission's president, said she wants to move from simple buyer-seller matchmaking to genuine demand aggregation overseen by a market operator. "We want to move from simple matchmaking to aggregating demand and task a market operator to do the joint procurement," she said, adding, "We need to invest in our resilience."
She wants the joint purchasing system created after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which was designed to pool EU gas demand, taken to the "next level" and expanded to other energy sources. She did not lay out how the operator would be selected or spell out its mandate.
Leaders gathering in Brussels next week are expected to put the issue high on the agenda.
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The current platform pools EU demand and matches it with potential suppliers to push prices lower and diversify away from Russian gas. Its effectiveness in converting matches into final contracts has been disputed, and major buyers have often stuck with bilateral procurement. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen has urged member states to consider steps to curb demand, but options to bring prices down quickly are limited.
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