EU consensus on climate change crumbles
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Dossier index
- Political will... or won´t
- Carbon conscience
- Copenhagen atmosphere - the Euranet blog
- Before the summit - the Euranet Blog
- 6 December – The climate change circus comes to town
- 8 December - Gotta getta gimmick
- 10 December - The summit hots up
- 11 December – Protest practice run
- 14 December: Hello Hopenhagen!
- 15 December – From battle lines to waiting lines
- 16 December - Summit under siege
- 17 December - The chill factor
- 18 December - The day of reckoning…
- Warming up?
After the first day of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, the long-running split between the old and newer members of the European Union has re-emerged, this time on the issue of carbon emission cuts.
At meeting in Brussels yesterday Poland put a spanner in the works for the EU's plans to raise its promised cut in C02 emissions from 20 to 30 per cent.
Poland's European Minister Mikołaj Dowgielewicz insisted that such a pledge would not be possible until the European Commission had performed an impact assessment, a tool used to measure economic, social and environmental consequences of any actions taken by the EC.
He told the EUobserver that a new target could "not be decided only at the political level at Copenhagen, but must be based partly on the basis of the impact assessment that the EC must present to the European Council in March”.
But just a few hours after Mr Dowgielewicz's statement, in Copenhagen yesterday Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller - speaking on behalf of seven EU members, including the UK, France, and Germany - reaffirmed commitment to the 30 percent target, but added the proviso that other world players must also bring ambitious targets to the table.
Out with the old, in with the new…
Poland and other Eastern European countries are wary of emissions targets because they, unlike their Western neighbours rely heavily on coal for energy. Estimates point to 90 percent of Poland’s energy coming from coal combustion.
Before the conference got under way in the Danish capital, both Poland and Estonia won European Court rulings on lowering their CO2 quotas by 27 and 48 percent respectively. These have since been appealed by the European Commission, which slammed the European Court of First Instance of defining “too narrowly the powers of the Commission”.
The Danish capital has so far only set the scene for political bargaining in carbon emissions, with countries such as the US and China cautious on any final deals being made there. The next UN-sponsored meeting is COP16, to be held in Mexico at the end of 2010, and analysts say it is looking increasingly likely that this is where any final decisions over the future of the Earth’s climate are likely to be made.
For more news and analysis from Copenhagen visit the Euranet Climate Conference dossier .
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