Strasbourg, 12/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - In a letter to European leaders, some five dozen captains of the steel industry, led by the president of the Eurofer association and the heads of ArcelorMittal Europe and Tata Steel, want the spring European summit “to restore balance between industrial, energy and climate policies in order to preserve the competitiveness of the industries which are at the core of the European economy”, particularly the energy-guzzling steel industry. They say that “all share the ambition to find an effective response to climate change”, but point out that their industry has been hard hit by a number of factors - the economic crisis, fierce international competition and the fact that the European Commission “has set new ambitious unilateral climate targets for Europe up to 2030 while details are missing. No industry can be expected to make investment decisions on this basis”. They add: “The proposed EU ETS target of 43% CO2 emission reduction by 2030 compared to 2005 means a 60% reduction for the EU steel industry compared to 1990, which is technically and economically impossible to achieve with current technologies”. This has been confirmed by studies of the EU's Joint Research Centre. (EH)