EU leaders have met over the past two days to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how to reduce the EU's dependency on Russian energy.

The Versailles Declaration has been agreed following an informal meeting of heads of government across the EU.

The declaration states: "Confronted with growing instability, strategic competition and security threats, we decided to take more responsibility for our security and take further decisive steps towards building our European sovereignty, reducing our dependencies and designing a new growth and investment model for 2030."

In terms of reducing the bloc's dependency of energy sources from Russia, the Versailles Declaration states:

"Over the past few years, the European Union has set ambitious targets to reach the objective of climate neutrality by 2050. As the EU works towards achieving that goal, the current situation calls for a thorough reassessment of how we ensure the security of our energy supplies."

In this respect, EU countries have agreed to phase out dependency on Russian gas, oil and coal imports as soon as possible.

This will be done in the following ways:

EU leaders have requested that the EU Commission come back with a plan before the end of May that would put the goals into effect.

The commission has also been requested to put forward a plan to ensure security of supply and affordable energy prices during the next winter season, by the end of March.

President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen said: "By mid-May, the commission will present options to optimise the electricity market design, so that it better supports the green transition.

"This is complemented by the option given to member states to tax windfall profits from energy groups.

"By the end of this month, the commission will present options to limit the contagion effect of the rise of gas prices to electricity prices. We need to be ready for the next winter. So we will set up a taskforce that will design a refilling plan for the next winter and coordinate the operation," she said.