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28th Mar 2024

Barroso reminds Europe of climate change threat

  • Solving climate change is not 'an after-dinner drink' besides dealing with the global financial crisis, said Mr Barroso (Photo: European Community, 2006)

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has urged EU leaders set to gather for two-days talks in Brussels this week (15-16 October) not to use the ongoing financial crisis to sacrifice the EU's ambitious, although costly, green goals. Meanwhile, some EU states are gearing up for a heated debate on the issue.

"Saving the planet is not an after-dinner drink, a digestif that you take or leave. Climate change does not disappear because of the financial crisis," Mr Barroso said on Tuesday (14 October), insisting that EU governments avoid turning their back on three targets, known as 20-20-20.

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Under last year's agreement by all 27 EU leaders, the union must boost production of energy from renewable sources, cut greenhouse gas emissions and to increase energy efficiency - each by 20 percent by the end of next decade.

There should be "no flexibility" regarding the goal, Mr Barroso said, adding without specification, however, that some flexibility could be applied when it comes to ways of achieving them.

"The financial crisis did not reduce the threat of the climate change," the commission president argued, underlining that the EU should learn its lesson from the current economic turmoil by adopting preventive measures rather than rescue plans.

The so-called energy and climate change package is set to feature high on the summit's agenda, with some EU states - mainly from central and eastern Europe - calling for "another, realistic look" on how to fulfill costly green goals, one EU diplomat told EUobserver.

The group of governments is reluctant to back one particular aspect of the draft summit conclusions. Within the draft, there is language that says that the "balance and fundamental parameters of [the climate and energy package] must be maintained".

The Baltic states, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Romania are not so convinced about its "balance", and are among those pushing for "some recognition" when it comes to CO2 emission cuts achieved by their economies between 1990 and 2005 - a period when eastern economies saw sharp economic - and thus also carbon emission - declines following the end of Communism. The commission instead bases its burden-sharing calculations on 2005 figures.

In addition, four delegations - from Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic - would like to see industry buying the right to emit carbon dioxide by auction only from 2020, instead of from 2013 as envisaged by the commission.

Mr Barroso himself said he understood what he called the "defensive" and "prudent" attitude of some countries in these difficult times, but insisted that the union's hesitation would effectively end global efforts in the area as well.

"I hope that the ethic of responsibility will prevail," he concluded, although a final agreement on the energy and climate change package is foreseen only by the EU leaders' summit in December.

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