Ukraine has called for creation of a single European energy market.

The presidential press service announced this in a statement.

"Ukraine is proceeding from the fact that such challenges as energy challenges can be overcome not in a bilateral format, but via a single, joint European policy," President Viktor Yuschenko said in Lisbon (Portugal) on Monday during an official visit.

Yuschenko said that Ukraine would do everything it could to support collective measures aimed at creating a single market of natural gas and electricity.

Yuschenko stressed Ukraine's unique transit potential and said that Ukraine is presently holding talks with the European Union on modernization of Ukraine's gas transport system.

Yuschenko noted that Ukraine recently signed a memorandum on linking its national energy system to the European Union energy system.

Yuschenko said Ukraine was paying significant attention to the issue of delivering crude oil from the Caspian region to the European Union.

According to Yuschenko, this specifically why work on transportation of Caspian crude oil via the Odesa-Brody route to the European Union is being performed at the international level.

Yuschenko noted that the concept for creation of a Caspian-Black Sea-Baltic transit area was drafted at the recent energy summit in Kyiv.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Yuschenko recently instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to reach agreement with Russia by July on gas deliveries from 2009.