A starting position from the EU

Oct 30th, 2009 5:54 PM UTC
By Jessica Gomez-Duran

The European Council has just wrapped up this afternoon. One of the aims of this European Council was to firmly establish the EU’s position ahead of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December and the conclusions from the meeting have now been published.

At a time when some of the press coverage around the potential of a global deal being struck in Copenhagen has been a bit negative, momentum can now roll on from this meeting through to the finance ministers in Scotland next week and onwards to Barcelona and a pre meeting of negotiators, and finally (in theory) to Copenhagen itself .

There are some really important messages coming out of the European Council, with strong language on all aspects of climate change and also a conditional offer from the European Union to do more if other countries/blocs step up to the plate.

Here are a few highlights and extracts from the Presidential conclusions:

- The European Council emphasise the need for a legally binding agreement for the period starting 1 January 2013 based on the Kyoto protocol and includes all of its essential features

- They call upon all Parties to embrace the 2°C objective and to agree to global emission reductions of at least 50%, and aggregate developed country emission reductions of at least 80-95%, as part of such global emission reductions, by 2050 compared to 1990 levels

- They also agree that by 2020, the mitigation and adaptation costs to developing countries could be around 100 billion Euro a year and that this should be met though a mixture of private and public finance. The EU Member States are ready to contribute its fair share of these costs

- All international parties should commit that climate financing would not undermine or jeopardize progress towards the Millennium Development Goals

This means the EU will be heading to the December summit with a strong negotiation position. African and other developing country negotiators in Copenhagen will be looking for more, but some participants in Copenhagen coming from other industrialised major emitting nations may be looking to do less. And so the negotiations on financing finally begin in earnest. The European Council taking place on 10 – 11 December (half way through the UN climate summit) will be able to review the early stages of Copenhagen in order to make any necessary decisions. Keep checking back for further updates.

TAGS: Climate and Development, Corruption, European Union, Policy News