Are (Sweden), July 25 (DPA) The European Union (EU) is hoping for progress in the run-up to a global climate change summit in December, Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said Saturday.
“We expect the negotiations to speed up,” Carlgren said at the end of a two-day informal meeting of EU environment ministers in Are, 630 km northwest of Stockholm.
The gathering agreed that Sweden, current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, would be given a mandate to negotiate on behalf of the 27-member bloc at the climate summit in Copenhagen.
The summit is expected to work out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol – which expires in 2012 – on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, but advance talks have been bogged down over costs.
“There is no Plan B,” said Carlgren.
He said the EU would set down its position for Copenhagen at a climate summit on Oct 29-30, preceded by a meeting of the bloc’s finance and environment ministers Oct 20-21.
The EU has pledged to cut carbon emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and will cut by 30 percent if other nations follow suit.
“All EU nations have agreed to this,” said Germany’s minister of state for the environment, Matthias Machnig.
The Copenhagen conference is expected to lay down reduction commitments for all signatories, in contrast to the Kyoto agreement, which applied only to industrialised nations.
One of the most contentious issues is the division of costs for carbon reduction measures and other climate protection goals, even among the EU members themselves.
Poland wants the distribution of costs among EU members to be decided before Copenhagen, according to participants in the Are talks.
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas is also in favour of an early decision on cost distribution, but this is opposed by a majority of EU members who feel the haggling involved would distract from the global negotiations.
The ministers agreed that no concrete figures on costs borne by the EU would be disclosed before the climate summit. Poorer countries and emerging economies want to know beforehand how much they can expect before deciding on their own steps to cut emissions.
The mandate for Sweden would cover the financial mechanism, but not the details of a cost breakdown.
