Brussels, 16/06/2009 (Agence Europe) - Immediately after the UN climate change meeting in Bonn which brought no significant breakthrough that could give cause for hope of far-reaching decisions at the international talks in December, and just before the European Council on 18-19 June, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has called on the EU to work for an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen and to make progress in organising its financial contribution to help developing countries pay for measures to lessen the effects of climate change to help them adapt to it.
In his letter to the president of the European Council, Jan Fischer, Barroso writes: “We have to work simultaneously on several different levels - to maximise the effectiveness of our input into the international negotiation process, to design the concepts that will help developing countries to deal with their emissions and the consequences of climate change, and to push ahead with nurturing and using low-carbon technologies, as well as sharing them with emerging and developing countries. We also have to decide inside the EU how to best organise the financial contribution that we will wish to make to help developing countries”.
For the moment, the draft conclusions on the Council table say nothing about this specific point on how member states “divvy things up” internally, other than the invitation to the Commission to bring forward a proposal speedily. In the chapter on “Climate Change and Sustainable Development”, the draft text simply picks up the agreement among EU finance ministers on the main criteria for sharing internationally the financing of measure to tackle climate change (ability to make a contribution and responsibility for green house gas emissions), and refers back to the conclusions of the Ecofin Council of 9 June which contained no figures (see EUROPE 9918). To bring on board a number of member states - in particular, Poland, which is worried that it will be asked to pay too high a contribution - the conclusions state that the external burden-sharing criteria will not necessarily be the same as internal criteria.
In March, the European Council undertook to set the EU positions on three issues, well in advance of the Copenhagen conference. These were: - the main approaches on funding attenuation, adaptation, technological support and enhancing capacity; - details of the EU contribution; - the principles for sharing the load among member states. Everything was to be based on concrete proposals from the European Commission. In its conclusions, the Ecofin Council, which carried out its share of the work in defining the criteria for sharing financing internationally, noted this undertaking in order to highlight that these three issues have to be discussed simultaneously.
For the moment, the Commission has brought forward no proposals on sharing the load among member states and “no date has been set for presenting such a proposal. We are awaiting the summit and we'll see afterwards,” a source close to the European Commission said on Tuesday 16 June.
The European Council is likely, then, to call on the Commission to submit, as quickly as possible, and in the light of the on-going negotiations, a work programme setting out clearly when the important decisions will be taken, the aim being to ensure that there will be enough time for internal coordination within the EU and decision making before the important international preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen conference.
Greenpeace calls on G8 heads of government to act decisively
The next decisive international meeting will be the G8 (in L'Aquila, Italy 8-10 July). Since in Bonn (1-12 June), industrialised and developing countries refused to change their stances, the latter waiting for the former to give firmer commitments before committing themselves, Greenpeace has called on G8 heads of government to move up a gear and to assume their responsibilities. Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace International says that it is clear that many government officials who negotiated in Bonn were divorced from reality, separated from the concerns of the public and climate science. Climate, he points out, is already changing, and heads of government must intervene immediately to break the deadlock in negotiations. He argues that they must personally assume their responsibilities: at the G8 summit they have to give commitments on serious, binding emissions reductions, and on funding for the developing world. Greenpeace fears that at the speed things are going, governments are heading for a long night of talks at the very end of the Copenhagen conference. (A.N./transl.rt)