By Ben Nimmo Oct 28, 2009, 15:20 GMT
Brussels - Twenty-seven families share a block of flats, and now it needs renovating. Who should pay, the rich ones who are already employing a cleaner, or the poor ones who can't afford one?
That, writ large, is the problem which European Union leaders will have to solve on Thursday when they meet amidst an explosive row over the question of who should pay the most to fight global warming.
The EU wants United Nations talks in Copenhagen in December to come to a deal on how to tackle climate change. To do so, the bloc is well aware that it will have to finance the world's poorer states.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, puts the total volume of funding needed from developed states at around 100 billion euros (150 billion dollars) a year by 2020, with 5-7 billion euros per year in 'fast-start' funding needed as of next year.
The commission's idea in proposing the sum was to gain the initiative over world powers such as the US and China, who have not yet put any numbers on the table.
Since the EU negotiates as a bloc, the 27 member states are expected to approve a joint funding commitment in Copenhagen. If they do, they will then have to split that bill between them.
But the question of who should pay how much has split the EU clean down the middle, with new members in the former Communist bloc against old members in the West.
The commission thinks that the bill should be split according to a common formula based on some combination of each country's wealth and greenhouse-gas emissions.
To follow the block-of-flats analogy, each family's bill should be based on how much money it has and how dirty it leaves the stairs.
But member states themselves will have to decide which factor should be more important, wealth or pollution. And that debate has degenerated into a violent tug of war, because the EU's richest states are also its least polluting ones.
According to the International Energy Agency, the EU's most climate-friendly economy, Sweden, produces just 160 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2, the main greenhouse gas) for every dollar of wealth it creates. That is the second-best performance in the world after Switzerland.
Bulgaria, the EU's dirtiest economy, emits 2.73 kilos of CO2 for each dollar of wealth it creates, worse even than China.
The two countries emit roughly the same overall amount of CO2 per year.
According to internal commission figures, if the EU were to base its share-out purely on emissions, Bulgaria and Sweden would therefore end up paying approximately the same amount.
That idea causes outrage in Bulgaria and its former-Communist allies, who argue that it would be unfair to make them pay the same as rich Western states when they are so much poorer.
'From our point of view, it is totally unacceptable that the poor countries of Europe should help the rich countries of Europe to help pay the poor countries of the rest of the world,' said Polish Finance Minister Jan Rostowski earlier this month.
That is particularly true of the proposed fast-start funding, with crisis-stricken states like Latvia arguing that they simply cannot afford to dish out millions in aid to poor countries next year.
But if the EU were to base its burden-sharing solely on wealth, Sweden would have to pay 10 times as much as Bulgaria.
That idea is unacceptable in the wealthy Western states, who argue that it is not fair to make them pay the lion's share of the bill when they have already spent so much to clean up their economies.
The commission and the EU's Swedish presidency have proposed a whole range of compromises, from a calculation based 75 per cent on emissions and 25 per cent on wealth, to a formula based 10 per cent on emissions and 90 per cent on wealth.
But so far, any option which pleased rich members has antagonized poor ones, and vice versa. On October 20, EU finance ministers hit deadlock on the issue, and passed it on to the summit.
That leaves the EU presidency walking a tight-rope between East and West on Thursday, with billions of euros hanging in the balance.
Speaking on the eve of the summit, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt urged leaders to avoid further deadlocks in their negotiations.
'The emerging economies are looking for financing, and without it they will not make the required reduction targets. On the other hand, the developed world is not willing to show money too early.
'But time is flying and we are very close to Copenhagen,' Reinfeldt said.
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