Ursula von der Leyden, the European Commission President, has said EU Member states should purchase their natural gas jointly, so as to avoid competing with each other for fuel and driving prices higher.

At the European Parliament session in Strasbourg on Wednesday, she said, “Instead of outbidding each other, Europeans should buy gas together. For this, we will purchase together gas at {the} EU level… We do this because we have learnt the lesson. We literally saw in August, at the height of the filling season, how member states were outbidding each other and prices were spiking. We definitely can be smarter than this. So pooling our demand is a must.”

She made the comments just one day after the European Commission introduced a new package of emergency measures designed to lower gas prices and ensure the EU has enough gas to get through the winter. One element of the plan is joint gas-purchases, and another is the introduction of binding “default rules” which will force member states to share gas in the event of a gas-emergency.

She went on to say, “We know that some member states are more directly exposed than others to Russian gas. The situation is especially challenging for landlocked countries in Central Europe. But in the end, in our single market with highly integrated supply chains, a disruption in one member state has a massive impact on all member states. So, sharing gas in a crisis is critical.”

Over just eight months, the EU has reduced its, “huge dependency on Russian gas” by about two-thirds, as it has diversified the supplies it draws upon, according to von der Leyen. However she conceded the accomplishment has proven expensive, and she called on the member states to invest in, “home-grown sources of energy,” to maintain the bloc’s competitiveness.