The European Union’s fight against global warming may be stalling as some governments back away from a promise under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change to give aid to poorer countries, EU diplomats said, reports The Wall Street Journal Europe.
More trouble for the Kyoto treaty is coming from the European Parliament, which is delaying the first reading of a bill designed to regulate emissions trading. The move puts at risk a 2005 deadline for implementing the legislation. The current dispute centers on how to share the cost. EU countries are supposed to present a united position December 1 at a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Milan. But EU environment ministers meeting Monday in Luxembourg, who were expected to rubber-stamp the funding, failed to agree. Diplomats said Spain, Greece and Portugal resisted. “Some countries want to pay less than was originally agreed,” an EU diplomat said.
The EU is behind schedule in implementing another important aspect of the Kyoto Protocol: emissions trading, which would allow EU companies to buy inexpensive pollution credits from developing countries. Apart from cutting the cost of fighting global warming, emissions trading is supposed to spur investment by EU companies in Eastern Europe and Africa and act as an economic incentive to encourage Russia to ratify the Kyoto treaty.