Brussels - The European Union is trying to sidestep a bitter internal fight on how to pay developing countries to fight climate change at a summit in Brussels next week, according to internal documents seen by the German Press Agency dpa.
But efforts to push the decision back to a summit in October could yet spark a new row, as some member states say that the subject should not be decided until 2010, EU diplomats said.
'All countries, except the least developed, should contribute to the financing of the fight against climate change in developing countries ... The main principles of contribution should be the ability to pay and the responsibility for emissions,' a draft statement prepared for the June 18-19 summit reads.
Nonetheless, 'this is without prejudice to the internal EU burden sharing, which will be determined in good time' before the key United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December, it says.
The draft statement follows an agreement between EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday to call for a common criteria setting out how much major polluters, such as the EU and the United States, should pay developing countries to help reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
But the ministers also agreed to postpone any debate on how the EU - which would be expected to sign up to a joint funding commitment in Copenhagen - should split the bill among its 27 members.
That debate is expected to be heated, as it potentially covers a bill running to tens of billions of euros.
EU diplomats said that Denmark is leading a push for EU members to use the same criteria as international states, but Poland wants the bill to be split according to economic performance alone - a criteria which would greatly reduce its own contribution.
The draft summit statement says that the EU must allow 'sufficient time' to solve the problem before the final round of international talks leading up to the Copenhagen conference.
That puts the onus on EU leaders to agree the details at their next scheduled summit in October, when Sweden holds the rotating presidency of the bloc.
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said on a visit to Brussels on Tuesday that the summit would be 'the time to formulate a position for Copenhagen.'
But EU diplomats told dpa that some member states oppose even that idea, instead saying that the bloc should not address the issue until after the Copenhagen conference, since it is not yet clear exactly how much funding the conference will demand.
EU officials estimate that the fight against climate change could cost 100 billion euros (139.5 billion euros) per year up to 2020.
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