KIEV, April 27 – Ukraine would like European companies to buy shares in its natural gas pipeline system as a way to achieve energy independence for itself and the European Union and lay the basis for "what would on the whole be a new energy policy in Europe," Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said on Monday.

"We want to see our European friends and partners as shareholders in the gas transmission system," Yatseniuk said at an EU-Ukraine summit in Kiev. "That would be the best response to the need for the energy independence of Ukraine and the EU, and create what would on the whole be a new energy policy in Europe."