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EU agrees climate funding deal
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-10-31 07:30 BRUSSELS: European Union leaders on Friday reached a deal on how to help developing nations tackle climate change, but without putting a figure to Europe's contribution, officials said. "We have an agreement," said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, at the end of a two-day European summit in Brussels. "The EU now has a strong negotiating position and the countdown to Copenhagen now has started," he added, referring to international climate talks in Denmark in December. The EU leaders agreed that developing nations would need 100 billion euros ($150 billion) worth of help annually by 2020 to tackle climate change and to deal with its consequences. Of that sum, about 22-50 billion euros ($32-74 billion) would have to come from public funds, as opposed to industry, Reinfeldt said.
However, the EU leaders failed to say how much of that money would be coming from Europe, amid strong differences mainly between the poor eastern European nations and the richer west. The 27-nation bloc prides itself on leading the fight against climate change, and has already agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, but many fear its leadership role could be compromised if it didn't come to the Copenhagen talks with a strong, unified approach. Funding is central to the chances of success in Copenhagen because developing countries say they will not sign up to tackling climate change without enough funds from rich nations. Many EU states had said that agreeing figures now would encourage others, such as the United States, to follow suit. But Germany had hoped to wait until other global powers had said how much they would provide. Sharing the bill Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said that a working group would now be set up to seek a concrete formula on how the bill is divided up in Europe. Lithuania, Poland and seven other eastern EU nations have been firmly against the idea of linking contributions to polluting levels, which would leave them with a heavy bill. They instead suggested that the burden sharing be divided according to national income, which would put the onus very much on the richer western European nations. "What the nine (eastern) nations are looking for is a fair burden sharing inside the union," Polish EU affairs minister Mikolaj Dowgielewicz told reporters on the sidelines of the summit. "We don't think you can make an assumption that Bulgaria or Romania will pay more than Denmark or the Netherlands because it would be purely absurd." Czech has its way EU leaders reached an agreement, paving the way for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, which would ease EU decision-making, create an EU president and increase the powers of its foreign policy chief. Under the deal, the leaders accepted Czech President Vaclav Klaus' demands for an opt-out from a rights charter attached to the treaty, to shield the Czech Republic from property claims by ethnic Germans expelled after World War TwII. Ratification by the Czech Republic now depends on its constitutional court rejecting a legal challenge in a ruling expected on Tuesday. AFP-Reuters (China Daily 10/31/2009 page11) |
