Led by the Visegrad Four (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland) Pact, eleven Central and Eastern European countries signed a joint statement in Budapest on Wednesday declaring that a secure energy supply was a top priority together with their readiness to cooperate in maintaining the supply.

Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia joined the Visegrad countries in issuing the statement declaring that they were ready to boost cooperation in linking their gas networks and in diversifying their supply lines and resources.

This includes working together to build a North- South energy corridor linking Croatian and Polish liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, the Nabucco pipeline envisaged to transport gas from Central Asia to Europe, and an LNG terminal in Constanta, Romania for seaborne shipments.

They also agreed to expand the Central European gas pipeline to run from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea, and to coordinate crisis intervention plans to be able to quickly assist one another should a new energy crisis arise.

Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai called the accord a milestone, saying that Central and Eastern European cooperation had reached a "critical mass" in cooperation. The outcome, he said, would be true competition on the gas market leading to higher quality service and lower prices.

A representative of the United States attended the meeting as an observer as did Tanaka Nobuo, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) together with specialists from the European Commission and from Spain, the current European Union president.