(PARIS) - European Union energy ministers on Friday vowed to place energy efficiency at the heart of plans to ease the soaring cost of fossil fuels and help meet the EU's goals on climate change.

"Energy efficiency today is the key, it has to become the absolute priority," French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told a press conference, summing up the mood at the first day of an informal meeting.

"We have come to a major turning point."

"It's the issue on which everyone is agreed," said European Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.

Ministers said they wanted to speed up a range of planned measures proposed by the European Commission to encourage energy-efficient consumer gadgets and lighting, including the replacement of incandescent light-bulbs by long-lasting low-energy substitutes.

They will also ask the Commission to come up with proposals to beef up heating standards in buildings, one of the biggest sources of energy use in Europe, Borloo said.

The two-day meeting, staged in a large tent in the Saint-Cloud park on the western rim of Paris, was intended as a forum for straight talk and swapping ideas rather than formal decision-making.

Sweden's minister for enterprise and energy, Maud Olofsson, praised the relaxed format, saying she hoped it opened the way to new thinking.

National energy efficiency schemes, which in the past were often barely visible to the public, have gained in profile since oil and gas prices began their surge last year.

The EU's own plan to improve energy efficiency by 20 percent come 2020 is part of an overall package aimed at slashing the bloc's carbon emissions by that date.

The Czech Republic's minister of industry and trade, Martin Riman, said that the two goals were intertwined.

"Energy efficiency is the most effecive way to achieve our climate and energy goals," said Riman, although he also pointed to fears among poorer countries about costly over-regulation.

"Let's keep in mind the different conditions in the member states," he said.

Earlier, the ministers lunched with their counterparts for the environment, who debated some of the big challenges facing the EU's 2020 climate and energy goal.

Last year, the EU set the goal of reducing its greenhouse-gas emissions compared to a 1990 benchmark, and giving renewables a 20-percent share of the European energy mix.

It now has to get down to the detailed business of agreeing how this will be achieved, especially the question of burden-sharing between poorer, former Soviet-bloc European nations and richer western economies.

Saturday's talks were to focus on the EU's dependence on foreign energy, on renewable energy and biofuels, delegates said.

Informal meetings of the ministers responsible for environment and energy, 3-5 July, Paris

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