Brussels - Poland will veto an EU declaration on climate change if it includes a commitment to reaching a deal in December, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorksi said at an EU summit Wednesday. "Poland is ready to veto if there are attempts to force us to accept the climate-change package in the next month," Sikorski said in Brussels.
Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland's minister for Europe, backed up that message, saying "we certainly don't see the conditions for early agreement if we don't find better burden-sharing inside the package."
Ahead of the meeting, the French presidency of the EU had proposed a summit declaration calling for "reaching an agreement in December" on proposed EU climate-change laws.
That clause would not be legally binding, but it would put strong political pressure on member states to reach a deal in December.
"Please don't tell me that a package of proposals equal in consequences to what people call a third industrial revolution ... has to be approved in the space of 10 months," Dowgielewicz said.
In March 2007, EU leaders pledged to cut the bloc's emissions of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
The EU's executive, the European Commission, proposed laws to put that pledge into effect in January, giving each country a target for cutting emissions based on its CO2 output in 2005.
But Poland and other EU newcomers from Central and Eastern Europe now want to be given credit for reducing their CO2 in the 1990s, at a time when their highly-polluting Communist-era industries collapsed.
That "recognition" could be translated into practical terms by giving the EU's newest and poorest member states a greater share in revenues from auctioning permits to emit greenhouse gases.
It could also be brought about by allowing them to count earlier emissions reductions against future targets or by making special rules for countries such as Poland which are heavily dependent on highly-polluting coal-fired power stations, Dowgielewicz said.
"What we want is recognition of our dependence on coal, so we propose a fuel-specific benchmark: if you use the best available technology for a certain type of fuel, such as coal, you get your (emissions) permits for free," he said.
Ahead of the summit, the leaders of Poland, the Baltic states, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia issued a joint statement demanding that the EU pay more attention to their economic situation in drawing up a comprehensive plan on climate change.
The prime ministers of the eight EU newcomers, which are also among its poorest states, "consider that climate change is a vital global issue" and "remain committed" to an EU deal on fighting climate change, the statement said.
However, the EU should "refrain from adopting measures that do not respect the differences of the member states' potential," especially in a time of "serious economic and financial difficulties," it said.
"The vast majority of the EU's greenhouse gas emission reductions have been achieved by less affluent member states at a very high social and economic cost, and it should be recognized," it said.
Any deal on the climate-change package will have to be reached by qualified majority voting, with 90 votes enough to block a deal. At present, the EU newcomers who wrote the letter command 85 votes.
Their declaration therefore called on the EU to decide on the climate package "through consensus," rather than by a strict interpretation of the qualified-majority rules.
The French proposals for a final declaration had already run into trouble as member states objected to what they saw as unacceptable language used in the draft version of the summit statement.
The original French draft had called on member states to sign up to a set of guidelines which they would follow when finalizing EU laws on how to hit the climate targets.
But following objections from EU members, the latest draft of the summit declaration, seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, simply says that France "has presented, under its own responsibility, its guidelines for further work."
Poland is set to host a major international conference on climate change in December.
