France and EU begin work on environment package (Roundup)

Jul 3, 2008, 12:50 GMT

Paris - The European Union and its current president France began work on Thursday on what has been hailed as the most important EU legal proposal in the last five years - a package aimed at fighting global warming.

'This package is very important, not only from an environmental point of view but also for economics,' European Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas told journalists at the Informal Meeting of Ministers of the Environment, held outside Paris. 'Higher (commodity) prices advocate for more energy efficiency.'

Dimas also noted that the package would 'contribute to energy security by reducing dependence on foreign oil sources.'

The host of the three-day meeting, French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, had earlier warned, 'It will not be easy. It will take a lot of work. No other region in the world has attempted a thing like this.'

The 'thing' Borloo and his fellow EU environmental ministers are attempting is to find agreement on laws that will reduce by 20 or 30 per cent greenhouse gas emissions in the Union by 2020, increase the use of renewable energy sources to 20 per cent of all EU energy consumption by 2020, and consume 20 per cent less energy in the EU than is projected for 2020.

France has made an agreement on this package a top priority of its six-month presidency, and is underlining the importance of the issue by making it the subject of its first ministerial meeting as EU president, just three days after assuming the role.

However, as Borloo suggested, difficult obstacles must be overcome before agreement can be found. Disagreements remain, for example, over how the EU's 27 member states should share the effort and costs of fighting climate change.

Under the European Commission's plan, each member state is given a reduction target based on its emissions in 2005 - the first year for which accurate EU-wide figures were available.

That proposal has angered new members such as Hungary and the Baltic states, who demand credit for making major emissions cuts between 1990 and 2005 - even though the 'cuts' came largely from the collapse of Soviet industry, rather than government policies.

Both Borloo and Dimas said that the poorer members of the Union would be granted financial concessions and emissions allowances to reduce the impact of the measures on their treasuries and their economies.

'We have to make the package equitable for all, especially for those who face higher initial investment costs,' Dimas said.

'There will be more gains than withdrawals in these countries,' Borloo noted.

Borloo said that Europe would be aiming for a 30 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions on the assumption that an appropriate international agreement will be achieved at the Copenhagen climate summit at the end of 2009.

'But 20 per cent will remain a default figure if no efficient agreement is found,' he said.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said he was convinced that France would succeed in getting the EU members to agree.

'Now things are getting serious in the matter of protecting the environment,' he said. 'Up to now we have only set targets. Now we must take measures.'

The meeting of environment ministers will be followed by a session with EU energy ministers, which ends on Saturday.