EU's emissions struggle

Ministers must overcome differences in climate-change strategy
By BERND RADOWITZ And JUAN MONTES
SEVILLE, Spain—European Union countries are struggling to agree on a target for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions ahead of a Jan. 31 deadline to deliver a concrete offer to the United Nations following the Copenhagen accord.
France, Germany, the U.K. and Spain said they favor adopting a more-ambitious target to reduce emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020, compared with the 20% target the EU is committed to—if others were to match that offer.
But EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said member states weren't unanimous on a target, and French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said Poland opposed going deeper than the 20% target. Italian Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo said even to talk about boosting the target to 30% after the "failure of Copenhagen" as if nothing had happened is "frankly surreal."
EU environment ministers were meeting in Seville this weekend to discuss climate-change strategy after the Copenhagen climate summit in December rendered only a nonbinding accord. It still needs to be fleshed out by concrete emission-cut targets by industrialized countries and voluntary actions from developing countries by Jan. 31. "We definitely think we should maintain the 30%. It has always been a conditional offer, but it is a very important signal that it is maintained," said Ed Miliband, the U.K.'s energy and climate-change secretary.
German Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen said the EU should move beyond its commitment made in Copenhagen.
"Twenty percent is not enough," he said. "Twenty percent won't make Europe the global driving force" in climate-change policies. Germany has committed itself to a 40% reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels.
Ms. Prestigiacomo said no one has explained how going from a 20% to a 30% emission-cut target could unblock the stalled global climate talks, while a 20% cut is already a gigantic strain on Europe's productive system.