- Renewables:
EU members are still deeply divided over a plan to set a mandatory target for increasing the use of renewable energy.
In January, the Commission made an ambitious proposal to raise the share of renewables in the bloc's overall energy consumption to 20% by 2020. It had intended to make this target legally binding on member states, claiming that such a move could save up to €100 billion and 780 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
But EU foreign ministers, meeting on 5 March, failed to agree on the mandatory character of the target. Energy ministers had met with a similar failure last month.
The main opposition comes from France and Finland, which both satisfy a large portion of their electricity needs through low-carbon nuclear energy and say that this should be taken into account. They are backed by a number of the new member states, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria – where coal remains a vital source of power and governments wish to resist binding targets that would force them to invest heavily in expensive renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Other countries are also warning against imposing unreachable goals on governments.
- Climate change:
Despite a certain scepticism from some countries, including Poland, Hungary and Finland, about Europe unilaterally cutting its emissions of greenhouse gases, member states have reached a global consensus on the goal of a 20% reduction by 2020.
They have also agreed that this target should be elevated to 30% should an international deal be reached to reduce emissions from all developed nations, including the United States.
However, the more prickly question of how the burden of these cuts will be shared out among member states will not be addressed at the meeting. A German official predicted that discussion on this issue could take some time: "We will be thinking about two years rather than two months," he said.
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