EU warms to action on climate change
EU warms to action on climate change
In the end, the European Council of 10-11 December mustered enough unity to make respectable commitments to developing countries faced with immediate challenges from climate change.
Within less than 24 hours last week, the EU managed at last to put its money where its mouth has been for more than the past 12 months. On Thursday afternoon, as the European Council started, even the best expectations of the optimists were only for some €6 billion to be offered by member states to help developing countries over the next three years. By Friday afternoon, the Swedish presidency was able to announce that €7.2 million had been definitely committed.
Securing this ‘fast-start’ funding – as pre-2012 support for developing countries is referred to – had already been identified as one of the crucial ingredients in the efforts to convince developing countries of the need to sign up to a deal in the UN-led talks currently under way in Copenhagen. An estimated €5bn-€7bn is needed each year in 2010-12 to help developing countries deal with the existing effects of climate change and reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions. The EU claims to be a developed-world leader in the Copenhagen talks depended on making a respectable contribution towards this total.
But the agreement was achieved only with difficulty. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, in his role as president of the Council’s rotating presidency, admitted on Thursday evening that only half of the 27 member states had agreed to make a contribution, and the money known to be on the table at that stage was little more than a third of the target. Reinfeldt and his team worked through the night with other EU leaders in pursuit of more, and on Friday morning interrupted the summit for 15 minutes to win extra pledges.
Brown-Sarkozy pledges
At an unusual joint press conference on Friday, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced pledges amounting to €2.4bn over the next three years. Brown said the UK would up its earlier offer from €88m to £1.2bn (€1.32 bn), and promised to increase that offer to £1.5bn (€1.66bn) if other developed countries make comparable commitments in Copenhagen. Sarkozy said that France was prepared to pay around €400m a year between 2010 and 2012. Further three-year commitments followed, with €1.26bn from Germany, and €60m from Poland, and eventually all 27 EU countries agreed to make a contribution, bringing the total up to €7.2bn. As José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, remarked, when the Commission had initially suggested that the EU should provide €5bn-€7bn over the three-year period, it was considered “excessive” by EU leaders.
There was no such breakthrough on funding for 2013 and beyond, in whatever regime emerges to replace the current Kyoto agreement, which expires in 2012. EU leaders have already accepted that after 2013, developing countries will need an estimated €100bn a year by 2020. But the summit offered nothing other than a restatement that the EU would pay an undefined “fair share” of this.
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No unconditional cuts
Nor did the Council respond to urgings – notably from Brown – for an early and unconditional EU commitment to cut emissions in annual greenhouse-gas emissions by 30% by 2020. Going beyond the current EU offer of a 20% cut will still depend on other developed countries making a comparable offer. German Chancellor Angela Merkel preferred to keep the 30% offer conditional, as an “incentive to other countries” in Copenhagen. And Poland wants no decision before an assessment next March of the outcome of the Copenhagen summit.
Fact File
Iran
EU leaders warned Iran to return to the negotiating table or face sanctions over its uranium enrichment programme. Because of the country’s “persistent failure to meet its international obligations” and its “apparent lack of interest in pursuing negotiations”, the summit instructed foreign ministers to “consider options” when they meet on 25 January – a reference to US plans for additional sanctions.
The European Council indicated it was ready to support action at the United Nations Security Council if Iran continued to prevaricate. However, member states are also considering, in concert with the United States, imposing tougher sanctions than those already in force even if Chinese and Russian hesitations prevent adoption of a UN Security Council resolution. The EU statement also expressed “deep concern” about the human-rights situation in Iran.
Stockholm Programme
The Council approved the Stockholm programme, the EU’s five-year plan in the area of freedom, security and justice, already adopted by member states’ justice ministers on 1 December and by the European Parliament in November. Spain, which takes over from Sweden in the rotating EU chair on 1 January, will prepare a timeline for legislative and non-legislative proposals through to 2014.
The programme aims to strengthen co-operation between member states in law enforcement, border management, civil protection and disaster management, as well as on criminal matters. Its ambitions include the creation, by 2012, of a common asylum system, and greater burden-sharing in combating illegal migration – of special interest to Spain, Italy, Greece and Malta, on the frontline in the fight against unwanted immigration.
Turkey
EU leaders chided Turkey for not opening its sea- and airports to traffic from the divided island of Cyprus, but stopped short of backing the call from Markos Kyprianou, the Cypriot foreign minister, for a complete freeze on accession talks. Cyprus is planning to block talks on five policy areas, or ‘chapters’, in addition to nine that are already on ice.
The Council also accepted the foreign ministers’ recommendation to defer until next spring a decision on opening accession talks with Macedonia. The European Commission concluded in October that Macedonia, a membership candidate since 2005, had met the preconditions for talks to begin. But Greece, which has a province of the same name, is resistant unless the country changes its name, and EU leaders nodded through foreign ministers’ conclusions that the only realistic way to resolve the issue was to give the UN more time.
But EU leaders did show a new openness to innovative ways of funding the costs of combating climate change.