ROME - Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi on Tuesday called on the European Union to act on surging energy costs, saying "structural solutions" were needed.

"The cost of energy will be at the heart of the next European Council," Draghi said in his address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

"We need strong and immediate decisions," he said, adding the bloc should adapt the schemes deployed to handle the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic to the consequences of the Ukrainian crisis and the rising energy costs.

(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Alex Richardson)