Brussels, 20/11/2013 (Agence Europe) - Japan's climate goal has been revised downwards, Australia's fuel tax is under threat, the G77 is threatening to withdraw from negotiations on climate funding and developing countries are demanding a re-examination of every country's individual historical responsibility in greenhouse gas emissions. Nothing seems to working any more in Warsaw. With three days to go till the end of international climate negotiations (COP 19 18-22 November), the possibility of reaching an agreement on a raft of balanced decisions and architecture for a legally binding global climate agreement appeared to be in doubt. This agreement is due to be concluded in 2015 and a bitterly disappointed EU made an appeal on Wednesday 20 November for all the different parties to try and make an effort to achieve this goal. Echoing the concerns of Ban Ki-moon and following the appeal by COP19 chairman Marcin Korolec, to try little bit harder, Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action also called for the different stakeholders to take the 2015 date “seriously” and not undo all the commitments previously made.
The commissioner told reporters that she was concerned because she had the impression that in rhetoric at least, some parties were pulling back from the commitments they had made in Durban and said this was unacceptable and wasting the international community's time. She said the problem was too urgent for backward steps to be taken. To parties not wanting to move until all commitments already made were introduced, she said that Europe kept its promises, and the demand that the IPCC re-examines the individual responsibility of each country amounted to postponing the 2015 deadline that everyone had agreed to in Durban. Matthias Groote (S&D, Germany), who heads the EP's delegation, wanted to reassure developing countries about the EU's commitments, including the financial ones. He said that the day before, the European Parliament had voted through a new budget for 2014-2020, which he was extremely proud of because it means that one of every €5 will be spent on the climate. He said that the EU would achieve its 2020 objective and next week, the EP's environment and industry committees would say what the EU wants to achieve by 2030 and he hoped that Australia would agree to connect up its carbon market with the EU's carbon trading system to send a good signal to the rest of the world. (AN/transl.fl)