Thaindian News

Brussels, Oct 30 (DPA) The European Union (EU) leaders Friday reached a compromise on how much money to offer developing countries to fight climate change, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite said at an EU summit in Brussels.
The agreement, brokered by Sweden, current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, is a milestone in the bloc’s efforts to seize the initiative in UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.

But leaders failed to reach agreement on how to split the resulting bill between themselves, putting that off to a future summit, Grybauskaite told DPA.

The EU’s 27 national leaders have endorsed estimates by the European Commission, the EU’s executive, that developed states will have to offer developing ones around 100 billion euros ($147 billion) per year by 2020, Grybauskaite said.

They have also backed a commission calculation that the developed world will have to offer 5-7 billion euros per year over the next three years to help developing states kick-start the transformation of their economies to a climate-friendly model.

Those figures “are both in” a joint statement approved by all 27 heads of state and government, Grybauskaite said. Earlier drafts of the statement had included the figures with the rider that they would depend on the outcome of the Copenhagen talks.

But national leaders failed to agree how they should split the EU’s share of the resulting bill, after a bitter row between eastern and western member states.

The commission wants EU states to agree to a common formula for calculating the bill based on each country’s income and greenhouse gas emissions.

But Poland and eight other eastern European states rejected the proposal, saying that wealth should be the only criterion used.

The nine have below-average income but above-average emissions.

That row is now set to go on between technical experts, before coming up again at a future EU summit where any member state dissatisfied with a proposal will be able to veto it.

“Account will be taken (in the formula) of ability to pay. There will be a working group created to find out a concrete formula. Everything will be finally decided in the (EU) council by unanimity,” Grybauskaite said.