Brussels - European Union leaders on Friday backed a package
of laws aimed at slashing the bloc's emissions of the gases which
cause global warming.
'This is historic, what is happening here. You will not find
another continent in the world that is giving itself such binding
targets,' French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chaired the summit in
Brussels, said.
'Europe has passed its credibility test. We mean business when we
speak about climate,' European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso
said.
But environmental groups reacted with dismay, saying the laws were
so watered down that they would not do the job they were written for.
The EU's compromise is so full of concessions to industry and
national interests that it is 'abysmal' and 'betrays EU climate
policy,' environmental group WWF said in a statement.
The laws approved in Brussels bind EU member states to cut their
emissions of the gases which cause global warming to 20 per cent
below 1990 levels by 2020, the most ambitious pledge on climate
change yet made by any world power.
EU leaders say that puts the bloc in a powerful negotiating
position ahead of world talks on a deal on climate change, to be held
in Copenhagen in December 2009.
'Europe must lead the way so that other countries feel that they
must follow in the run-up to Copenhagen,' British Prime Minister
Gordon Brown said during a break in the talks.
Ahead of the Brussels summit, diplomatic wrangling over the
package had become intense, with member states grappling over the key
questions of who should pay for the package and how they should
protect their most important industries.
On Thursday, the French government, which holds the EU's rotating
presidency, set out a compromise proposal aimed at placating those
concerns by offering concessions to a broad swathe of member states.
Poland, for example, was reassured that its coal-fired electricity
generators would be given a generous free allowance of permits to
emit carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) until 2020.
Britain won a 50-per-cent boost in EU support for the creation of
a new generation of power stations that would pump their CO2
underground - a technology which is seen as critical to global
efforts to fight climate change.
Slovakia and its fellow-EU members from Central and Eastern Europe
were offered a handout of 2 per cent of all the emissions permits to
be auctioned in the EU because their emissions slumped after the fall
of Communism - an 'effort' which they insisted should be rewarded.
Germany and Italy were assured that their industries would be
protected from competition from countries with less stringent climate
laws by being awarded free emissions permits of their own.
And wealthier states such as Sweden and Belgium were assured that
they would be able to count emissions-reductions projects which they
sponsor in the world's poorest countries towards their own national
emissions-reduction targets under the EU laws.
Member states were quick to back the proposals, reaching agreement
in two rounds of talks on Thursday evening and Friday morning.
'I don't like to get exhausted staying up until 4 in the morning
to negotiate on peanuts ... Having chaired eight hours yesterday, it
was useless to go beyond that,' Sarkozy said.
The package now goes to the European Parliament for what should be
the final vote on the issue on Wednesday.
But given the scale of the concessions the package makes to member
states, diplomats warn that parliamentary approval cannot be taken
for granted.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story