The European Commission on Saturday welcomed the results of the UN climate change conference which has just ended in Poznan, Poland.
"Poznan has proved a useful staging post on the way to the Copenhagen conference a year from now, when the world must conclude an ambitious new global climate agreement for the post- 2012 period," European Union (EU) Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.
"The growing consensus over the past 10 days, including on developing a shared vision for the new global agreement, is encouraging. But there is still a huge amount of work ahead of us to reach a satisfactory agreement in Copenhagen," he said.
Dimas reiterated the EU's willingness to reduce greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent compared with 1990 levels provided that developed countries commit to comparable reductions under a Copenhagen agreement.
"The latest science is telling us that developed countries as a group must reduce their emissions 30 per cent by 2020 to prevent climate change from reaching dangerous proportions," said Dimas.
EU leaders agreed on a package of measures to implement their earlier pledges to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2020, to save energy consumption by 20 per cent and to have a share of 20 per cent of renewables in total energy consumption.
Dimas also welcomed the solution to the legal problems surrounding the Kyoto Protocol's Adaptation Fund for developing countries. The solution clears the way for developing countries to start receiving project funding to strengthen their resilience to the inevitable impacts of climate change.