The EU plans to appoint a market operator to help member states jointly procure energy. In less than five years, the EU is facing a second round of energy price crisis. European Commission President von der Leyen said on Tuesday that he hopes to elevate the gas joint procurement mechanism established after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out to the “next stage.” The mechanism was initially aimed at gathering the EU's natural gas procurement needs, and will be extended to other energy types other than natural gas in the future. The current joint procurement mechanism mainly aggregates the gas needs of EU buyers and matches them with potential suppliers to reduce procurement prices and at the same time push gas supply away from dependence on Russia. However, there has been controversy over how much of the final deal this mechanism actually contributed to. Many large energy buyers still prefer to use the original bilateral procurement method. Von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France: “We want to move from simple supply and demand matching to demand aggregation, and entrust a market operator to take responsibility for joint procurement. We must invest in improving our own resilience.”

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