Making his New Year marks on 5 January, Commission President José-Manuel Durão Barroso regretted the lack of progress on energy efficiency by Member States, and said the EU Executive would press them harder to deliver "concrete results" to achieve the 20% energy savings target by 2020...

The Commission President first reminded that innovation and energy -as two of the priority growth-enhancing sectors- will be at the top of next European Council´s agenda. Mr. Barroso said he was "unhappy with the progress made on energy efficiency":  "While on the renewables we are making a lot of progress and it is now realistic to think that we are going to fulfil our 20% target by 2020, this is not the case for our target on energy efficiency", he said, arguing that energy efficiency is actually EU´s "best source of energy". Barroso underlined that unlike the binding renewables and emission reduction targets, "there was no specification of the concrete steps so probably this is one of the reasons why we are not going so fast in energy efficiency". Mr. Barroso said he was going to discuss with Member States how to reach the 20% energy savings target, "because the potential for savings in energy in transport and households, buildings and industry are really there". He called on the Council to agree on "concrete measures to reach the 20% target by 2020".

In light of these observations, José-Manuel Barroso identified five priorities for future work on energy, namely a strong energy policy as key to competitiveness, sustainable growth and security, an internal market in energy, the building of EU´s new energy infrastructure, important progress on energy efficiency, and an effective and united European approach in terms of external energy policy. He highlighted the need to achieve a "truly European energy market", and added: "I see energy policy as the next great European integration project".