Poland's Tusk says EU energy divisions cost 30 billion euros/year

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's failure to complete its single energy market and to unite when negotiating gas contracts with Russia costs around 30 billion euros ($41 billion) per year, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Wednesday. Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, transit route for around half of the gas Europe imports from Russia, has intensified European Union efforts toward energy independence. Poland, which neighbours Ukraine, has also been pushing the idea that EU member states should negotiate gas contracts with Russia as a bloc, rather than the current practice of each one acting alone. Addressing a Brussels conference alongside European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, Tusk said member states' failure to work together to negotiate with Russia and their failure to complete the single energy market was an economic and a political burden. He cited figures attributed to analysts that the lack of common negotiation and insufficient infrastructure to share out supplies across the bloc was costing 30 billion euros annually. Europe, was enslaved to Russian gas, he said, which limited its political room for manoeuvre and made it unable to agree on sanctions against Russia. "The only way to overcome crisis is by going for a European approach," he said through an interpreter. "The banking union that emerged was the only way that we could get out of the financial crisis." Criticising EU governments' reluctance to disclose terms of gas contracts agreed with Russia, he asked: "Do gas secrets deserve more protection than banking secrets?" The Commission, the EU executive, aspires to energy price harmony across the 28-member bloc but says it should be achieved through a single EU energy market, based on connected infrastructure and market forces, rather than the EU acting as a single energy buyer. Poland has itself been criticised for failing to fully implement EU legislation on a single energy market. The Commission has a deadline to complete regulation on the single market this year. Specifically in response to the Ukraine crisis, it is working on measures to make Europe less dependent on Russia's energy, which include improved market transparency while avoiding any conflict with EU competition law. Oettinger told the conference Europe needed "a common energy foreign policy, a common front when dealing with supply countries." (Reporting by Barbara Lewis, editing by David Evans)