The European Commission has proposed a new company to bring gas from central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea in a move likely to raise tensions at Friday’s meeting of EU and Russian leaders.

The Caspian route, which would require the construction of a new pipeline, would enable the EU to bypass ­Russia in order to access the resources of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which last month announced it had ­discovered one of the world’s biggest gas fields.