EU leaders approve climate change laws (2nd Roundup)

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,' said French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chaired the summit in Brussels. 'Europe has passed its credibility test. We mean business when we speak about climate,' European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said. But environmental groups condemned the deal as a failure, saying the laws were so watered down that they simply would not work. 'This is a dark day for European climate policy. European heads of state and government have reneged on their promises and turned their backs on global efforts to fight climate change,' major pressure groups WWF, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Climate Action Network Europe said. 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 was 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. After the first round of summit talks, on Thursday, French negotiators were 'so desperate for a deal that they threw candies at everyone,' a diplomat close to the talks told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 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 key 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, and that they would in any case not have to buy all their permits at auction until 2027. 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. Even the Baltic states - among the bloc's smallest members - were not forgotten: Estonia won protection for its power generators from Russian competition if Russia rejects a global climate deal, while Lithuania won a promise of free emissions permits if the impending closure of its Ignalina nuclear power plant forces emissions up. And little Latvia was promised its own free permits 'owing to the significant level of electricity imported from Lithuania.' Member states were quick to back the proposals, reaching agreement in a single further round of talks on 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.