Diplomats: EU wrangles over climate figures ahead of summit

Sep 17, 2009, 12:04 GMT

Brussels - European Union member states are at odds over the bloc's policy on climate change, with Poland and Italy fighting attempts to commit the bloc to funding targets for developing nations, diplomats said Thursday ahead of an EU summit in Brussels.

A draft summit declaration drawn up by Sweden, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, says that global greenhouse gas emissions will have to be cut to half of their 1990 levels by 2050, and that this effort will cost around 100 billion euros (147 billion dollars) per year, including in Western aid to poorer countries.

That statement, based on proposals from the EU's executive, the European Commission, is meant to launch debate with other world powers at next week's Group of 20 (G20) summit in Pittsburgh.

But EU member states including Poland and Italy want the figures to be scrapped, diplomats in Brussels said.

EU nations have not yet agreed how much each one of them should contribute to the global fight against climate change. The bloc is only set to debate that question at the end of October, leading some states to say that it would be premature for the EU to put figures on the table now.

Many of the EU's poorer countries in Eastern Europe, where the largely Soviet-built energy sector is notoriously polluting, warn that they cannot afford to pay as much as richer and more modernized Western neighbours.

Italy's premier Silvio Berlusconi, meanwhile, argues that the EU cannot afford to pour money into the fight against climate change in developing countries at a time of economic crisis at home.