European Council: €100 billion a year to fund climate efforts in developing countries, but EU does not announce how much it will contribute
Tuesday, 03 November 2009 11:38 | 
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EU leaders meeting last week at the final European Council summit ahead of the Copenhagen conference in December have agreed that €100 billion would be needed annually to finance climate efforts in developing countries. In the European Council conclusions they announced €22-50 billion would have to come from international public financing, although they crucially failed to use the meeting to reach an agreement on the exact summit that the EU would be prepared to commit to this goal.
This decision was immediately heavily criticised by many NGO’s and Green MEPs, although EU leaders have defended their stance on the basis that they will now first wait for ‘comparable commitments’ to be made by other industrialised economies before making commitments themselves.
One of the main reasons why the EU has repeatedly failed to strike a compromise on funding is down to pressure from Eastern European Member States, who fear they would be asked to make greater commitments than they are able to afford. This was the case once more, with countries including the UK, Denmark and the Swedish Presidency, giving into the demands of nine Member States from the east, who refused to agree to new proposals. This left Rebecca Harms MEP, President of the Green Group at the European Parliament, to comment that ‘The EU's preoccupation with finding a weighting mechanism to ease the burden on its economically weaker member states is apparently not matched by a genuine commitment to achieve a fair agreement on a global scale’.
The EU was however able to make greater progress on the amounts that would be needed on a global scale to assist developing countries. In the short term, €5-7 billion per year would be needed between 2010 and 2012 as fast-track funding, whilst in the longer term this figure would have to be around €100 billion per year instead. The EU again refused to be drawn into a commitment on how much it would contribute towards the fast-track funding, saying this would be determined after Copenhagen.
Away from funding, EU leaders endorsed the new long-term target of reducing the collective developed country emission by 80-95% by 2050, provided other developed countries made similar commitments, as had been agreed by environment Ministers last week. They did not however make any progress on the issue of unused emissions allowances, or Assigned Amount Units (AAUs).
Environmental groups were fairly unanimous in their disappointment at the renewed failure of EU leaders to reach ambitious decisions on key areas that still now need to be addressed. Jason Anderson, head of EU climate and energy policy at WWF, stated that ‘It is especially frustrating that no clear European financial offer to developing countries has been agreed, and that the increase in CO2 emission reduction targets is made conditional upon comparable efforts by other developed countries’.
Friends of the Earth were equally unimpressed, saying ‘Europe has failed once again to say how much it is prepared to contribute for climate finance. Heads of state only cited global figures which are completely inadequate, as are the targets they have set for cutting emissions. In every way the EU is shirking its historical responsibilities and blocking progress towards the just and fair agreement the world needs in Copenhagen’.
It remains to be seen what the implications of the EU’s latest stalemate will be, although it seems fairly clear that it has not boosted the beliefs of those who believe a comprehensive climate deal will be agreed. It is clear though that ‘hard commitments on direct funding from all developed countries will be required if the parties to the Copenhagen summit are to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to the EU target of 2°C’, as pointed out by the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, Jules Kortenhorst.
This decision was immediately heavily criticised by many NGO’s and Green MEPs, although EU leaders have defended their stance on the basis that they will now first wait for ‘comparable commitments’ to be made by other industrialised economies before making commitments themselves.
One of the main reasons why the EU has repeatedly failed to strike a compromise on funding is down to pressure from Eastern European Member States, who fear they would be asked to make greater commitments than they are able to afford. This was the case once more, with countries including the UK, Denmark and the Swedish Presidency, giving into the demands of nine Member States from the east, who refused to agree to new proposals. This left Rebecca Harms MEP, President of the Green Group at the European Parliament, to comment that ‘The EU's preoccupation with finding a weighting mechanism to ease the burden on its economically weaker member states is apparently not matched by a genuine commitment to achieve a fair agreement on a global scale’.
The EU was however able to make greater progress on the amounts that would be needed on a global scale to assist developing countries. In the short term, €5-7 billion per year would be needed between 2010 and 2012 as fast-track funding, whilst in the longer term this figure would have to be around €100 billion per year instead. The EU again refused to be drawn into a commitment on how much it would contribute towards the fast-track funding, saying this would be determined after Copenhagen.
Away from funding, EU leaders endorsed the new long-term target of reducing the collective developed country emission by 80-95% by 2050, provided other developed countries made similar commitments, as had been agreed by environment Ministers last week. They did not however make any progress on the issue of unused emissions allowances, or Assigned Amount Units (AAUs).
Environmental groups were fairly unanimous in their disappointment at the renewed failure of EU leaders to reach ambitious decisions on key areas that still now need to be addressed. Jason Anderson, head of EU climate and energy policy at WWF, stated that ‘It is especially frustrating that no clear European financial offer to developing countries has been agreed, and that the increase in CO2 emission reduction targets is made conditional upon comparable efforts by other developed countries’.
Friends of the Earth were equally unimpressed, saying ‘Europe has failed once again to say how much it is prepared to contribute for climate finance. Heads of state only cited global figures which are completely inadequate, as are the targets they have set for cutting emissions. In every way the EU is shirking its historical responsibilities and blocking progress towards the just and fair agreement the world needs in Copenhagen’.
It remains to be seen what the implications of the EU’s latest stalemate will be, although it seems fairly clear that it has not boosted the beliefs of those who believe a comprehensive climate deal will be agreed. It is clear though that ‘hard commitments on direct funding from all developed countries will be required if the parties to the Copenhagen summit are to achieve the goal of limiting global warming to the EU target of 2°C’, as pointed out by the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, Jules Kortenhorst.
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