EU leaders set to clash at summit energy talks

European Union leaders were set to clash over crafting a joint energy policy at their two-day summit talks tomorrow, amid protectionist sniping over the shielding of national energy companies from takeovers.

On the eve of the talks, which are meant to focus on adopting practical measures to boost jobs and economic growth, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, who will be chairing the summit, called on all leaders to put aside nationalist priorities to agree on a plan to avoid future shortages of supplies as was the case this past winter.

“We want to break new ground by debating an energy policy for Europe that covers secure, competitive and durable European energy supplies and leads to a common foreign and trade policy concept in energy issues,” Schuessel said in a letter to his 24 EU counterparts.

Europeans are coming off a winter in which a Russian-Ukrainian squabble over natural gas prices threatened their supplies and after a summer that saw oil prices at new highs, denting six-year-old EU pledges to implement economic reforms to boost growth.