"The Commission is proposing a new Council Regulation on Coordinated Demand Reduction Measures for Gas …The new Regulation would set a target for all Member States to reduce gas demand by 15% between 1 August 2022 and 31 March 2023," the commission said in a statement.
The commission added that the new regulation will give, "after consulting Member States," a possibility to declare a so-called "Union Alert" and impose "a mandatory gas demand reduction" on all member states.
On Wednesday, European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said that the commission was preparing the European Union for a winter without Russian gas.
"We need to prepare for a winter without Russian gas, we have to be prepared for that," Breton said during a press conference.
Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, in her turn, said that a complete halt of gas supplies from Russia could lead to a shortage of at least 30 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in the EU this winter, as long as it will not be too cold.
"The message is clear if there is a full disruption we will face a gap between gas supply and demand. We estimate that this gap will be 30 bcm in an average winter, 45 bcm in colder one and even larger if the winter is exceptionally cold," Simson said.
Simson also said that the bloc expects high volumes of non-Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG).
"We assume that non-Russian LNG and pipeline supply will remain high through the winter," Simson added.
Meanwhile, Spain has already rejected the proposal.
In mid-June, Russian energy giant Gazprom significantly reduced gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline due to delays in maintenance work on turbines by German and Canadian companies, forcing EU countries to tap into winter gas reserves and consider returning to coal production.
Maintenance is set to end on Thursday, but the European leaders announced that they were preparing for the worst possible scenario of a gas cutoff in the event that the pipeline did not restart.