EU cobbles together climate aid for Copenhagen

In a joint statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy  and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated: 

"To ensure predictable and additional finance in the medium term to 2020 and beyond, we should make use of innovative financing mechanisms, such as the use of revenues from a global financial transactions tax and the reduction of aviation and maritime emissions and the auctioning of national emissions permits. We will work together on this." 

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at the final press conference: 

"Britain's contribution is one that we are proud we are making, and that is $800 million or £500 million a year. That makes it possible for the poorest countries to come to the table knowing that they can mitigate carbon emissions and adapt to climate change." 

Brown said he and other EU leaders would do "everything in our power" to secure an ambitious deal at the UN summit in Copenhagen, which concludes next week. 

"I believe there is goodwill now, that there is a determination that things move forward. Obviously we are hoping that other countries respond to the generous offers that Europe has made but we look forward to a successful outcome," the British PM further added. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy  said after the summit that aid for developing countries is "today a mix", the objective being that addressing the climate change challenge should not come at the expense of the Millenium Development Goals. 

"As for the 2010 budget, we had to cobble something together, because it has already been put in place. But the objective is to foot the bill, and therefore we will push for innovative financing," he said. 

As for the Copenhagen summit, he said he would arrive on Thursday (17 December), instead of the previous day. 

"Barack Obama said he will arrive on the 18th. I am not going to stay there for 48 hours watching the negotiations and telling you that nothing is moving," the French president said. 

Speaking to EurActiv, Jo Leinen, chair of the European Parliament's environment committee and leader of the MEP delegation to Copenhagen, said the Parliament will make sure that there is "no trick" concerning the amounts earmarked to help developing countries address climate change. 

Hailing the fact that EU leaders had given "a positive signal to developing countries" and expressing hope that by showing its readiness to help, Europe "will break the deadlock in Copenhagen," he added: "The European Parliament has asked for fresh money, because we have more than one crisis: climate, but also poverty […] I would not exclude that we have overlapping programmes, but we have to make sure that there is no trick." 

"This is progress in the sense that the EU has, as far as I understand, for the first time expressed its own offer," Finnish Green MEP Satu Hassi  told EurActiv. "It is also good in the sense that it implicitly states that the EU's share would amount to about a third," she said. 

Nevertheless, Hassi said she had hoped that the leaders would increase Europe's mid-term emission reduction target to 30%. She pointed out that the EU could have helped to ensure sufficient emission reduction ambitions in the Copenhagen talks by organising the next bidding round on targets now that all the important parties had put their offers on the table. 

Development agency ActionAid issued a press release entitled 'The EU's fast-start finance – is it new money?' 

The European Union's new numbers on fast-start climate finance for developing countries are highly questionable, according to the development agency. 

Almost all of the money is likely to be simply a relabelling of existing aid commitments, ActionAid claims. 

"Many EU members have a track record of repackaging or re-announcing existing aid commitments. This appears to be the case here too. Real leadership on climate change requires real money and the EU is clearly failing here,” said ActionAid EU expert Anne-Catherine Claude. 

"The key test of whether money is truly new is whether it is additional to the 0.7 aid target that rich countries signed up to 39 years ago," said Claude. "None of the money announced today appears to meet that test." 

The EU also failed to move forward on long-term finance by simply re-stating its existing global target of €22-50 billion of public money by 2020, which at best, is less than half of what is needed, ActionAid states. 

WWF  issued a statement via Jason Anderson, head of EU climate and energy policy at WWF's European Policy Office: 

"The European Council has missed a great opportunity to move forward on emissions reductions targets, and to inspire real progress in the final, crucial week of negotiations in Copenhagen. This is extremely disappointing. The EU has always tried to position itself as a leader in the global climate change debate - but that claim is looking increasingly threadbare. The science makes it abundantly clear that developed countries must cut emissions by 40% by 2020 in order to keep warming below the critical two degree threshold. Yet the EU has again failed to move beyond its offer to reduce emissions by 20% - even though this can be achieved without any further domestic effort." 

WWF is also critical of accounting "hot air" regarding the contribution by Eastern EU countries in combating climate change. 

"It also seems that the EU has failed to make any progress in closing two key loopholes that will further undermine the already weak emission targets. Until the EU makes progress in tackling so-called 'hot air' - the surplus emission allowances held by several Eastern EU member states - and the accounting tricks associated with land use and forestry emissions, the ambition of any EU emission target will be very much less than it seems. This loophole could allow countries to set their own levels of projected deforestation, from which they will assess how much carbon they have saved by not reaching their projected level. As they can set the bar as high as they want to, it could allow a handful of member states to predict doom, only deliver disaster, and claim credit for the difference." 

"The chances of reaching a just and fair international agreement on combating climate change are extremely slim today after European heads of state failed to significantly strengthen the EU's position for Copenhagen," Friends of the Earth Europe stated following the summit. 

"EU climate ambitions would be achieved with a huge element of offsetting which is an excuse for developed countries not to reduce emissions at the scale and speed science says is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," a press release reads. 

"To stand a reasonable chance of staying below the crucial two degrees Celsius global warming threshold, Europe and other developed countries which are historically responsible for causing climate change must cut their emissions by at least 40% by 2020 without offsetting," Friends of the Earth Europe state. 

"Providing fast track money cannot excuse the EU from its real long-term commitments. That the EU is largely using money which otherwise would have been used to build schools or deliver health care in the developing world is shameful and will not be welcomed by developing countries in Copenhagen," said Sonja Meister, climate campaign coordinator at Friends of the Earth Europe. 

She claimed that EU leaders had "repackaged" development aid money to achieve climate change goals. 

Tim Gore, Oxfam International's EU climate change policy advisor, said: 

"In Copenhagen poor countries are demanding real commitments of long-term finance to tackle climate change. In Brussels today, EU leaders only offered small sums of short-term cash. Worst of all, this money is not even new – it's made up of a recycling of past promises, and payments that have already been made." 

"Each member state that has pledged a sum for the EU total should now own up to where the money will come from, whether it has already been committed elsewhere, and what it's to be used for." 

"To regain trust with developing countries, EU heads of state and government need to come to Copenhagen ready to commit their fair share of the long-term finance poor countries need - upwards of 35 billion euros every year from 2013. To seal the deal, they must guarantee the money will be new and come on top of commitments already made on development aid," Gore stated. 

Greens/EFA President Rebecca Harms issued a written statement claiming that EU leaders had again missed an opportunity to reclaim Europe's leading role in the UN climate negotiations. 

"While the EU has avoided total disgrace by agreeing a commitment on fast-track climate financing for developing countries (2010-12), it needed to do far more to restore Europe's credibility, with the crucial summit now underway in Copenhagen." 

"The summit shamefully failed to deliver the necessary step up in the EU's emissions reduction target from 20% to 30% […] The Council also failed to clarify its position on the crucial make-or-break issue of long-term financing for developing countries. This makes a mockery of the EU's continued claims of climate leadership and is in contradiction with the EU's goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius," Harms concluded. 

Commenting on the conclusions of the EU summit, German Green MEP Sven Giegold commented: 

"We welcome that - for the first time - the European Council has shown its support for a financial transaction tax. The pledge is made a little too easily given that it is specifically made for a global tax, the best solution but one already rejected by the US Secretary of the Treasury." 

"The Greens/EFA Group calls on Europe to go it alone if necessary and pioneer the introduction of the financial transaction tax. Each time zone and each currency area can introduce such a tax autonomously. The evasion possibilities are within acceptable limits, given that the ECB has wide control possibilities when it comes to settlement of euro transactions," Giegold stated.