PARIS: European Union (EU) environment ministers began an informal two-day meeting here on Thursday aimed at clearing some of the many obstacles besetting their goal of slashing carbon emissions by 2020.
French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, chairing the first top-level meeting under France's six-month presidency of the EU, was to ask his counterparts to identify two key areas of national concern to help spur the negotiation process, diplomats said.
"I find the mood is good, there's no posturing, no-one's playing games, but at the same time we are dealing with a question that's tough, there are very tough things here," Borloo told reporters.
"To put things in perspective, the economies of 27 countries, with a variety of backgrounds in energy and industry, are being asked to make a somewhat radical shift using everyday budgets," he said.
"At the moment, no other region in the world is attempting something on this scale."
Last year, the EU set the goal of reducing the 27-nation bloc's greenhouse-gas pollution by 20 per cent by 2020 compared with a benchmark year of 1990. They promised to deepen this to 30 per cent if another industrialised power followed suit.
They also pledged to boost the share of renewables in the EU energy mix to 20 per cent, including a 10-per cent share for biofuels.
But agreeing on the details of these broad goals has become a touchy and complex issue in the light of the surge in oil and gas prices.
Several countries dependent on coal, Russian gas and Soviet-era nuclear plants are pleading for get-outs or easier terms, and the role of biofuels has come under attack for its impact on global food prices.
Other thorny areas include the future allocation of emissions quotas by industry under the EU's carbon market and measures to curb pollution by the transport sector.
Borloo hopes to wrap up the deal on the climate and energy package by year's end, so that the EU is in a position to wield clout at the UN talks in Poznan, Poland, in December that will shape a worldwide pact on tackling climate change beyond 2012, when the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol expire.
The meeting, taking place at the Saint-Cloud chateau on the western outskirts of Paris, finishes Friday. It will be followed by an informal meeting of EU energy ministers on Friday and Saturday.
