(WARSAW) - Prime Minister Donald Tusk will visit Paris and Berlin Thursday for top-level talks on EU plans to slash carbon dioxide emissions, the stalled Lisbon Treaty and the fate of two Polish shipyards.

Tusk is scheduled to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current EU president, in Paris and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

Along with several other EU states heavily reliant on coal-fired energy plants, Poland is calling for the European Commission increase its carbon dioxide emissions cap for energy utilities.

Warsaw had asked the commission for a 2008-2012 carbon dioxide quota of 284.6 million tonnes per year, but Brussels reduced it by 26.7 percent to 208.5 million tonnes.

Among other proposed measures to slash the EU's CO2 emission by 2020, the European Commission wants to introduce auctions of 100 percent of carbon dioxide emission permits for energy companies across the EU from 2013.

Poland, with its growing economy almost entirely reliant on state-owned coal-fired energy plants, wants a more gradual introduction of the auctioned quotas in order to ease the cost burden.

Its environment ministry has proposed a 20 percent carbon dioxide quota auction be introduced in 2013, rising by degrees each year to reach the full 100 percent by 2020.

Germany relies on coal for roughly half its energy, while coal-fired power plants are virtually non-existent in France, where atomic energy is a primary source.

On Tuesday a European parliamentary committee supported the commission's proposal for full quota auctions from 2013.

Tusk also said he intended to focus on the fate of two troubled Polish shipyard in Gdynia and Szczecin.

The European Commission is considering whether to approve restructuring plans for the yards that face bankruptcy should Brussels reject the plans.

On Wednesday Tusk was in Spain for regular bilateral consultations.

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