Brussels, 06/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Environment Council, which gathers this Tuesday 7 November in Brussels, will be exclusively dedicated to climatic change. Organised a few days before the sixth Conference of signatories to the United Nations framework convention on climatic change (COP6) that will unfold in The Hague from the 13 until the 24 November, this special Council has as mission to finalise the position that the EU will defend during this decisive point for the future of the Kyoto Protocol. It is in The Hague in fact that will have to be definitively ruled the methods for the implementation of this legal instrument signed in 1997 and containing, for the first time, the binding undertaking by the industrialised countries to reduce by 5.2% the average emission of six greenhouse gases by 2008-2012 (8% for the EU and the Central and Eastern European Countries, 7% for the United States).
The EU Environment Ministers will dedicate most of their work to a strategic debate on the most thorny issues that still widely divide the European Union, the United States and their allies (Canada, Australia, Norway, New Zealand and Japan) and the developing countries - issues whose resolution largely conditions the success of The Hague conference. Concerned are: a) the rule for the operational functioning of the three flexibility mechanisms in the Protocol (pollution licence trade, joint implementation of objectives between industrialised countries and transition countries, "clean development" mechanisms enabling to grant emission credits to industrialised countries operating technology transfers towards developing countries), b) the inclusion of carbon wells (ability of forest to absorb carbon) as a means of achieving these objectives, c) the share that the developing countries must take in the fight against global warming, d) the monitoring mechanism for conformity of the objectives. Over these issues, the position taken by the EU is already defined and its positions already well known: i) ensure the environmental integrity and credibility of the Kyoto Protocol by guaranteeing that national policies and measures represent at least 50% of the efforts undertaken to achieve the objectives, ii) create a mechanism to monitor the very strict conformity, together with financial sanctions, should the goals not be attained; iii) limit the use of carbon wells as long as scientific know-how has not assuaged the uncertainty regarding them; iv) encourage developing countries to engage voluntarily in combating climate change, without imposing binding objectives on them, as it is up to the industrialised countries to show the way; v) ensure ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. The Council's strategic debate will have as main aim to prepare ministers to react to counter-proposals that could be made in The Hague and define those that could be acceptable and those that could not.
The session, chaired by Dominique Voynet, France's Minister for Town and Country Planning, will begin at 12.00 hrs. at the end of a meeting between ministers and non-governmental organisattions specialised in climate issues, in accordance with the wishes of the Presidency to open the debate to civil society on a society subject so far confined to the realm of experts. Margot Wallstrom, Environment Commissioner, will represent the European Commission. Here is the programme of the work:
1) Ministers will have a strategic debate and adopt conclusions on the stance the Union will defend at the COP 6
2) The Council will take note of Margot Wallstrom's interim report on the European programme on climate change, subject of a communication presented by the Commission (at the same time as the Green Paper on the establishment, in the European Union, of a system of trade in greenhouse gases emission rights) in view of proposing, in 2001, new Community-wide policies and measures.