EU split over increasing climate efforts

(BRUSSELS) - European nations were divided Monday over increasing their efforts to tackle greenhouse gas emissions, as UN climate talks got underway in Copenhagen.

The 27 EU nations have already agreed to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020. The dispute is over a linked proposal to boost the cuts to 30 percent if the rest of the world makes ambitious pledges in Copenhagen.

"At the moment the conditions for the EU to move to 30 percent are not met," declared Polish Foreign Minister Mikolaj Dowgielewicz on the margins of a meeting in Brussels with his EU counterparts.

He said there must first be comparable offers on the table from elsewhere.

"Since we'll have a sequence of events leading to a conference in 2010 in Mexico" for a full international agreement, there's no need for the EU to rush, he added.

However France, Britain and others are keen to up the ante, deeming there have already been sufficient pledges to warrant the switch to a 30 percent target.

"France is in favour of the upper offer, of 30 percent, as soon as an international accord is found," French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said at Copenhagen.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband echoed the call.

"It is existing EU policy to shift from a 20 percent cut to a 30 percent cut in the context of an ambitious global deal, and that's what we are committed to maintaining," he told reporters, when asked about the reticence of Poland, which, like other eastern European EU members, is dependent on heavily polluting coal-fired power stations for much of its electricity needs.

The matter will be discussed during a two-day EU summit which starts in Brussels on Thursday.

The EU nations are also split on the question of funding climate change efforts in the developing world.

The European Union has not yet decided on what to offer.

Copenhagen climate conference: key EU objectives

United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009