Brussels, 14/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 13 November (see other article) EU27 finance ministers indicated that with a contribution of another €100 million, member states will have kept the promise they made in 2009 to provide €7.2 billion to support short-term climate change mitigation and adaptation measures for developing countries. Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for climate action is somewhat proud of this achievement.
On Tuesday evening in her comments on the conclusions of the ECOFIN Council she stated that, “Despite severe economic constraints, Europe is delivering. We are on track to meet our commitments of providing €7.2 billion for climate finance over the period 2010-2012. This is a very important achievement as it represents the result of joint efforts taken in a very difficult economic context. And we can see already concrete results in many developing countries! Developing countries can count on Europe to continue to provide climate finance after 2012”. The ECOFIN Council conclusions, however, do not contain any specific figure for the EU's contribution towards raising more long-term finance promised by richer countries to developing ones ($100 billion a year up to 2020).
According to information provided by member states regarding immediately available funding, €7.1 billion has already been provided (40.5% for emissions reduction action, 30.1% for supporting adaptation and 13% for supporting action to prevent deforestation and forest deterioration (REDD+). The €7.2 billion figure will therefore certainly have been reached, indeed superseded by the end of the year. The European Commission made a commitment to provide the contribution of €150 million over a three-year period and is certainly pulling out all the stops in this respect because it has already raised €155 million. (AN/transl.fl)