Green Times

The European Union’s new French presidency expects tough negotiations among the bloc’s 27 countries in coming months as it seeks an ambitious deal to protect the climate ahead of international talks in December.

“It will not be easy — it will be much work,” French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told reporters as he and his peers from other EU nations met in Paris on Thursday.
At the top of the French agenda is the task of balancing the interests of western European states with those of eastern Europe, which fear emissions curbs will push up the price of electricity and stunt economic growth.

Poland and a group of seven eastern European states led by Hungary are pushing for the EU to ease their pain by overhauling Europe’s Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), the EU’s main tool in the battle against climate change that makes companies pay for permits to emit CO2.

Poland, which gets about 90 percent of its power from carbon-intensive coal, wants power companies to receive free CO2 permits for longer to prevent electricity prices rising.
Hungary is pushing for the EU to recognise historic CO2 reductions by eastern European states when their economies failed after the collapse of communism.

Borloo told Brussels journalists visiting Paris ahead of the environment meeting that France would not back such changes, instead backing a major redistribution of the proceeds from the ETS to help those countries modernise their energy sectors.

“We will do everything to stick as closely as possible to the Commission proposals, because if you reopen them, it becomes impossible,” he said.

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Europe would set a good example for the global negotiations in Poznan, Poland in December if it managed to balance the interests of east and west.

“What we experience is just the same as in the international climate negotiations: the better developed countries struggle with those who just get their economic development going,” he added.

The EU is also seeking ways to protect energy intensive industries from the risk they will be disadvantaged in competition with rivals based in countries outside the EU with less stringent environmental standards.

A French diplomat said France and Germany had agreed to look at the possibility of giving free CO2 permits for the threatened industries, as well as imposing border-taxes on their international rivals.

But Germany’s Gabriel questioned that approach.

“The instrument we deem as inappropriate because it could create a trade war,” he told reporters.

“It would not help the European companies who operate at the world market,” he added.

“It would not help to punish the competing producers.”

Source: The Guardian, UK