EU-US summit faces climate-change deadlock

Efforts to forge a common EU-US strategy on climate change at next week’s summit have all but failed, with Washington insisting that the issue be discussed in the context of energy security.

Talks are expected to continue in the lead-up to the summit, which will take place in Washington on 30 April, but diplomats said that a US U-turn was unlikely.

"The [climate] declaration is still under discussion, it has been the most difficult aspect of the agreement," said one diplomat following an EU-US video-conference in Brussels on Wednesday (25 April).

During months of negotiations, the US has framed the discussion on climate change as a question of reducing dependence on oil and gas and improving technologies for carbon capture and clean coal. Washington has also pressed for improvements in biofuel technology and cultivation.

"They essentially want to talk about energy," said one EU source.

In contrast, EU member states had tried to persuade the US to sign up to a commitment to strengthen and extend carbon markets, like the EU’s own emissions trading scheme.

Sources involved in the negotiations said that the EU attempted to include in the EU-US?summit declaration key elements of a new regime for reducing carbon dioxide emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires.

The EU had tried to convince the US to commit itself to limiting global warming to 2°C and to launch negotiations on an international climate agreement in Bali later this year which could replace the Kyoto Protocol.

In return, the EU had agreed to include a reference to "fair contributions from developed and developing countries". The US has long insisted that China and India’s absence from the Kyoto Protocol puts US firms at a competitive disadvantage.

But fears of jeopardising the EU’s broader environmental goals, including the agreement of a post-Kyoto regime, have caused member states quietly to drop demands that climate change is discussed separately from energy security.

Germany, which holds the presidency of the EU and chairmanship of the G8, hopes to make climate change the central focus of a G8 summit in 6-8 June in Heiligendamm.

Speaking to the European Parliament on Wednesday (25 April), German Minister for European Affairs Günter Gloser tried to strike a conciliatory tone, noting that technology and research were areas where the EU and the US could co-operate.

"There have always been differences of opinion of a very fundamental nature," Gloser admitted, while expressing his conviction that "energy security and climate protection is going to be the transatlantic project for the 21st century".

But some member states are unhappy at the prospect of intrinsically linking climate change to energy security.

"We still think we need to focus on climate more than anything else, the two issues are related but separate issues," said one Danish diplomat.

EU member states are now expected to press for some additional commitments on climate change at the G8 summit.

At the EU-US summit next week, leaders are to agree a series of measures to strengthen economic relations.

They are expected to push for international standards on biofuels and promote the sustainable production of biofuels worldwide.

They are also set to establish a protocol to protect intellectual property rights, move towards harmonisation of impact assessments, establish an investment early warning system and create a scheme for determining authorised economic operators.

Efforts to forge a common EU-US strategy on climate change at next week’s summit have all but failed, with Washington insisting that the issue be discussed in the context of energy security.