Paris - "Plenty of problems" have emerged at an informal meeting of EU environment ministers in Paris, the spokeswoman for European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Friday. "Everybody has his demand, industry and NGOs, and this meeting is all about putting the problems on the table," Barbara Helfferich told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
"We will then try to find answers, first on a technical level and then on a political level," she said.
The European Union and its current president, France, are attempting to find agreement on a package of laws that will reduce by 20 or 30 per cent greenhouse gas emissions in the Union by 2020, increase the use of renewable energy sources to 20 per cent of all EU energy consumption by 2020, and consume 20 per cent less energy in the EU than is projected for 2020.
France took over the EU presidency on Tuesday, and has made the environment package the subject of its first ministerial meeting, underlining both its importance and, some analysts say, the solid chances that agreement will be found.
Helfferich said that one of the goals of the informal meeting in Paris is to "draw up a roadmap of how to arrive at a first-reading agreement of the package" in the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council by the end of the year.
Early Friday, ministers agreed to establish a committee of experts who will be charged with drawing up a document regarding the modes of payment for the cost of the package. This issue will then be discussed and voted on in October, Helfferich said.
