EU leaders fail to set climate targets

BRUSSELS - European Union government leaders declined on Friday to set tougher targets for fighting climate change, dashing hopes they would inject momentum into a United Nations climate conference in Chile in December.

At a two-day EU summit in Brussels, which was largely dominated by Brexit, discussion on climate was relegated to the last agenda item and took less than 15 minutes.

“The existential threat posed by climate change requires enhanced ambition and increased climate action by the EU and at global level,” read the final statement by the leaders.

The bloc aimed to “finalise its guidance on the EU’s long-term strategy on climate change at its December meeting”.

That means the EU will not bring more ambitious climate changefighting objectives to the UN gathering in Santiago on December 2-13, part of a process to check signatories’ progress towards implementing the 2015 Paris accords.

Beyond the cautious wording of Friday’s EU communique lurks deep divisions over climate strategy within the 28-nation bloc, whose standing goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

Many EU countries want to go further on the 2030 target and commit the EU to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the EU’s powerful executive, has made it one of her top priorities.

But poorer eastern member countries such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, whose economies rely much more on coal for electricity production, are reluctant to do more.