Brussels, 23/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - The publication of a new report on the CARBOEUROPE research initiative (financed by the EU to the value of EUR 15 million) on the theme "Accounting for Carbon Sinks in the Biosphere, European Perspective" arrives at a key juncture to confront the EU position in the international negotiations on climatic change (COP6) that is presently under way in The Hague at ministerial level. In fact this report indicates that to limit global warming, it is more important to preserve existing forests than to plant new ones. "the new forests would only tackle additional CO2 temporarily, buying at most 15-100 years of time for the implementing of alternative greenhouse gas reduction strategies" assert the authors of the report presented on Wednesday in The Hague. The difficulty of scientifically determining to what extent the forests (that, one after the other, absorb and the emit CO2) play a role of carbon sinks explains that the EU has never been very favourable toward the creation of new forests to compensate CO2 emission, as opposed to the Americans. Calling for the respect for the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol, Margot Wallström, European Commission for the Environment, stated at the opening of the plenary negotiation session: the decisions that we have to take over the forests and agricultural land have the power to empty of meaning the aims of the reduction of greenhouse gases concluded in Kyoto. The absorption of carbon by existing forests represents in itself around four times the aims for the reduction of emission from all industrialised countries. We must avoid this perception. The EU now has a new argument to justify its refusal, Tuesday, of a proposal from the United States that, it is true, reviews downwards their requirements for a maximum taking into account of carbon sinks in the calculations of reductions in greenhouse gas emission, but still constitutes, in the eyes of the Europeans, a scapegoat to the obligation of acting to effectively reduce emissions.