Reuters 15 Jan 10;
SEVILLE, Spain (Reuters) - The European Union's conditions for moving to a 30 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade have not been met, an informal European Commission position paper says.
The EU has already set its own internal target of cutting CO2 to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade. It promised ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in December that it would deepen those cuts to 30 percent if other countries followed suit.
"In particular due to the insufficient offers by the U.S. and Russia, the EU's comparability criteria to move to a 30 percent target are not met," said a document prepared for environment ministers meeting in Seville, Spain on Saturday.
"The EU should therefore submit the 20 percent commitment," added the paper seen by Reuters. Official commitments must be submitted to the U.N. climate negotiations by a January 31 deadline.
Spain holds the EU's rotating presidency until July and will play a role in defining the bloc's climate strategy for 2010.
The move will disappoint environmentalists who argue that the economic crisis has slowed industry to the point that the less ambitious goal is within easy reach.
"Sticking to 20 percent emission reductions in the EU is utterly incompatible with the ambitions of the EU's Spanish presidency on renewable energy and economic recovery," said Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken.
But ministers said they would keep pushing other countries to increase their emissions cuts ahead of a climate meeting in Mexico at the end of this year.
"It's very important to find a way of getting people to the top of their ranges," British environment minister Ed Miliband told Reuters. "When those commitments can be ratcheted up is something we're working on."
The nominee for European climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, told a European Parliament hearing on Friday that she hoped the EU's conditions for moving to 30 percent had been met before the Mexico meeting.
"Is it not better...if we can squeeze out some few more percentages from other parties?" she added.
(Reporting by Pete Harrison, editing by Anthony Barker)
