EU leaders leave climate change to the G8

“Today has shown us that European leaders are still not up to the challenge. We need European leadership to push for a strong climate deal by the end of this year,” said Joris den Blanken, EU climate and energy policy director for Greenpeace. “No action from the EU now, leaves the road wide open for less ambitious countries like Japan and the US to water down the deal.”

Greenpeace calls on EU leaders taking part in the G8 to prepare an emergency proposal on climate change in the next two weeks. The emergency plan should contain commitments for upfront payments to support the preparation of green action plans in developing countries and fund the immediate needs to adapt to the already unavoidable impacts of climate change.

At today's summit, EU leaders only reiterated what was already agreed last week by finance ministers: that sharing the financial effort to support climate measures in developing countries should be based on the principles of ability to pay (GDP per capita) and historic emissions. The leaders concluded that all other aspects of climate finance would be agreed by October.

“Money is the make or break issue in the ongoing global climate negotiations. Waiting until October means another three months of deadlock in international negotiations,” said den Blanken.