By Julia Payne and Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS/STRASBOURG (Reuters) -The European Union will prioritise fixing eight power grid bottlenecks, the Commission President said on Wednesday, in an effort to lower the bloc’s uncompetitive energy prices and improve energy security.

“I am presenting today a new initiative called Energy Highways. We have identified eight critical bottlenecks in our energy infrastructure. From the Oresund Strait to the Sicilian Canal,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union address in Strasbourg.

“We will now work to remove these bottlenecks one by one.”

Electrification is essential to the bloc’s climate ambitions but there remain stark price and connection gaps across the 27 member states.

Earlier this year, Spain and Portuga

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