EU leaders to focus on climate aid during summit

BRUSSELS — With the European Union pressed to make a firm climate aid offer to poor nations, Hungary and Poland demanded Thursday that richer states pay a larger share to entice more governments aboard a new global climate change pact.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt — who is chairing a two-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels — said the EU's credibility was on the line, and failure to make a clear financial offer could jeopardize the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

Reinfeldt called on leaders to open their wallets and signal to the United States, Japan and other top donors to come forward with their own aid pledges.

"What I want to see is a more fixed sum that would open the way for others to do their part," he said.

Hungary's Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said, however, that sharing the aid costs between all 27 EU nations "is not acceptable" for the bloc's poorer, eastern members.

"We want a result this weekend, but not at any price," Bajnai said just hours before EU leaders were to begin summit talks.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland's position, similar to Hungary's, "is gaining acceptance in many European countries."

The EU — a self-proclaimed leader in setting global climate change policy — is also urging other rich countries to match its pledge to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and says it will go even further and cut up to 30 percent, if other rich countries follow suit.

The Europeans also want to reduce aviation emissions by 10 percent and shipping emissions by 20 percent, compared with 2005 levels.

The United Nations is looking to collect an annual global fund of euro100 billion ($150 billion) by 2020 to avert scientific predictions of potentially catastrophic changes in sea levels, weather patterns and water resources.

The U.N., environmental groups and even poorer nations themselves argue that a substantial aid package could help persuade the developing world to join a new global climate deal, meant to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The world's wealthy nations are seeking broad controls on emissions from all countries in the new pact. Developing countries say tough emissions limits would hamper their growth, and industrialized nations — who are responsible for much of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere — should carry most of the burden.