(VIENNA) - French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, said European countries should club together to give them greater bargaining power in their negotiations with gas suppliers such as Russia.

At a time of soaring energy prices, "we believe it would be better to strike a common stance in Europe," Kouchner told a joint news conference with his Austrian counterpart Ursula Plassnik.

"Russia negotiates with us as if Europe didn't exist. They negotiate on a one-on-one basis which is understandable but not to our advantage," he said.

"We need to create a feeling of European solidarity between consumer countries," he said, even if he noted that France relied on Russia for only 25-30 percent of its gas, with the rest coming from Algeria and Norway.

The idea of a European gas purchasing centre, as proposed by the previous EU president Slovenia and taken up by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, would fit in with this, Kouchner argued, pointing out that such a facility already existed in the area of electricity.

"For electricity, it's shared between the requirements of some and the output of others," he said.

It would help create "an idea of European solidarity in matters of consumption and enable us to act differently with suppliers and Russia in particular," Kouchner said.

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