EU summit - climate policy
EU leaders pass up chance to resuscitate UN climate talks
At their Brussels summit, EU heads of state and government have failed to advance the EU negotiating position ahead of international climate talks in Copenhagen.
Rebecca Harms, President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament, commented:
"EU leaders have shamefully passed up a golden opportunity to breathe life into flagging hopes for the international climate talks in Copenhagen.
Recycled rhetoric and double standards on climate policy were back on show. EU leaders speak loud and clear on the global challenges of climate change, but remain tongue-tied when it comes to meeting their own responsibilities. EU governments have now acknowledged the need for an annual 100 billion towards climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, but have once again failed to put a clear figure on the EU's contribution.
The EU's preoccupation with finding a weighting mechanism to ease the burden on its economically weaker member states is apparently not matched by a genuine commitment to achieve a fair agreement on a global scale. Fair solutions must be found for the likes of China, India and Brazil, not only for Poland.
At this summit, EU leaders have regrettably focused more on cooling expectations for Copenhagen than on tackling the warming of the planet. The only real success to report is that the planned Copenhagen talks survive at all in the face of this mass abdication of responsibility."
Notes to editors:
The Greens/EFA Group has launched a "Climate Circus" website that measures the showmanship of industrialised countries' leaders against the content and consequences of their current climate policies: www.climatecircus.com
