Jun 3, 2009, 20:04 GMT
Brussels - The European Union on Wednesday hit a deadlock over the question of how to fund the fight against climate change in the developing world, EU diplomats said.
The bloc is committed to supporting climate-change mitigation measures in poorer countries as part of a bid to win global acceptance for strict limits on emissions of greenhouse gases at a meeting in Copenhagen in December.
But representatives of the EU's 27 member states meeting in Brussels failed to agree on how their countries should share the bill, diplomats close to the talks told the German Press Agency dpa.
A majority of member states, including heavyweights such as Germany, backed a Danish call to use the formula that the bloc set out in 2008 to decide how much effort each of them should put into fighting climate change - a formula that combined economic growth, emission levels and previous emissions cuts.
But a minority led by Poland opposed the idea, calling instead for a formula based solely on each state's capacity to pay.
Such a move would benefit the EU's new, former-Communist members, who have relatively high per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, but whose economic output is still well below the EU average.
The EU is committed to cutting its own emissions to at least 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, and is pushing developed and developing powers to sign up to their own targets in Copenhagen.
Diplomats say that the bloc will have to offer convincing funding to rising powers such as China, India and Brazil if it is to win their acceptance for binding targets.
The issue is now set to come up at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday. It is also expected to feature at the EU's quarterly summit in Brussels on March 18-19.
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