The EUObserver reports that Europe remains deadlocked over climate policy:

Another point of dispute regards Europe’s climate change package, based on goals to cut CO2 emissions by 20 percent and boost renewables and energy efficiency by 20 percent, all by 2020.

Until recently, the details of the plan were most loudly criticised by poorer states in central and Eastern Europe but the current problems in the banking sector have sparked doubts elsewhere about footing the bill for green reform.

The French presidency – backed by the European Commission – has been trying to include a strong political confirmation of the EU’s climate change commitments and a list of issues on which member states have already reached a compromise in the summit conclusions.

But after endless debates among ambassadors over the past days without agreement on a common text, Paris decided to present the document only as a legally non-binding paper, called “presidency guidelines.”

“We discussed it for three hours without moving anywhere although the document only had two pages,” one diplomat told EUobserver, adding “So you can imagine how divided we are on this.”

France is determined to achieve a deal by the end of this year, while Brussels is warning that any softening of the agreed goals would undermine Europe’s credibility as well as the global climate change efforts.

“Climate change does not disappear because of financial crisis,” commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said on the eve of the summit.