EU agrees on climate change package

EU leaders agreed to contribute generously towards the estimated €22 billion to €50bn a year developing countries will need to deal with climate change.

The EU hopes the sums and the cuts of up to 95% in emissions by 2050 will encourage the US, China, India, Canada and others to make similar commitments at next month’s global UN conference on a new climate change deal.

Exactly how much the EU and each member state will contribute to this huge sum has yet to be worked out but it will take into account a country’s GDP, its greenhouse gas emissions and its ability to pay.

Earlier figures suggested up to €15bn per year would come from the EU.

This could mean hefty sums for Ireland, which is among the top three in terms of emissions and GDP in the EU even after the recession is taken into account. Taoiseach Brian Cowen emphasised that the country would pay its fair share.

The deal, agreed after hours of internal wrangling by EU heads of state, was criticised by NGOs which said the figures fell far short of what was needed to help poorer countries that were bearing the brunt of climate change.

But Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso described the deal as an important breakthrough.

“We can now look the rest of the world in the eye and say we have done our piece,” he said.

Europe is the first to put figures on the table and make firm commitments both on the reduction of greenhouse gases and contributing to poor countries.

The EU is now in a position to push the other global players to match them, and Barroso said he would be doing this in Washington next week during the EU-US summit with President Barack Obama.

They will follow this up at similar summits in India and a number of other leading global players, he added.

Brian Cowen said it was important for the EU to maintain its leadership role on climate change and help lead the rest of the world towards ambitious targets.

“This moves us closer to a global deal,” he said.

The European Commission estimates that developing countries will need massive sums of money to cope with climate change culminating in €100m a year by 2020.

Up to 40% of this should come from the governments of industrialised countries, about 40% from sales of carbon and the balance from developing countries in the form of renewable energy and other changes.

The question of just how much each EU country would contribute will not be decided until after the UN’s Copenhagen summit in December when the successor to the Kyoto Protocol is to be agreed.

Poland and eight other central and eastern European states wanted the basis of the calculation agreed now, but the rest of the EU were afraid that it would tie their hands during global negotiations which take place next month.

Instead they all agreed to establish a special forum that will look at all the options and work out a formula, but this will not be concluded until after Copenhagen.

The EU agreed that the world cannot wait until the new agreement comes into place in 2012 to help poorer countries adapt and agreed that a fast-start fund of between €5bn-€7bn a year for the first three years should be set up. Contributions to this would be voluntary and would depend on other key players making comparable commitments.

Oxfam said that money for the developing countries must not come out of existing aid commitments. Foreign Minister Micheál Martin said there would be a cap of 10% on the amount of climate change aid that could be ascribed to development aid.

However Oxfam said the deal could not be considered a breakthrough as developing countries needed at least €110bn a year from wealthier states, of which the EU and the US would provide at least €35bn a year each.