President calls for agreement over EU climate change package

Parliament's president Hans-Gert Pöttering has called for "concrete results" in the negotiations on the EU's climate change package before the international climate conference in Poznan in December.

Pöttering said that further action was needed in order to make some progress on the road towards an international agreement at the end of next year.

"Our planet is heading for a dramatic crisis due to human malpractice", he said.

"If we want to convince our partners in the world to participate in a binding global strategy, we have to show concrete results”, he added.

Pöttering was speaking at a conference organised by parliament’s scientific research panel STOA looking at measures to meet the future energy demand and to combat climate change on a global level.

Time is running out for an international agreement on the next stage of the Kyoto protocol, to be negotiated next year at the UN climate conference due to place in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Pöttering said that the Copenhagen conference will be "the last chance for the international community of states to formulate a comprehensive and binding answer to climate change."

"The price of inactivity is increasing every day," he added.
 
Of the informal negotiations on the EU's climate change package which are currently taking place between parliament, council and commission, Pöttering said that parliament was ready to hold its first-reading vote in December, ahead of the European council and the Poznan conference.

"It is now up to the Council if there is enough flexibility to reach an agreement in first reading by December this year", said Pöttering.

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