DPA | 30 Oct, 2009
The European Union reignited a $150 billion row over the use of greenhouse gas emission credits at a summit in Brussels Thursday, a week after environment ministers had taken the issue off the table.

The row further complicates the summit's bid to agree on how EU states should share the cost of fighting global warming, weeks before UN talks on fighting climate change in Copenhagen.

"There was an agreement at the meeting of environment ministers (...) There is now a proposal to change that in the current (summit) declaration, and that is not acceptable," said Hungarian premier Gordon Bajnai on behalf of a group of Eastern European member states.

Environment ministers meeting in Luxembourg Oct 21 decided that they should not try to solve the problem of Assigned Amount Units (AAUs) until they have had in-depth talks with Russia and Ukraine, two non-EU members who control the bulk of the credits.

But a draft statement prepared by the EU's Swedish presidency for Thursday's summit called for firm "constraints" on the use of AAUs, regardless of the Russian and Ukrainian position.

That move infuriated member states such Poland and Hungary, as well as EU members from the Baltics, who also hold valuable stocks of AAUs.

AAUs give countries credit for cutting emissions by allowing them to sell emissions permits to other governments.

The collapse of the USSR and its highly polluting industrial base in 1991 left former Communist states holding around 10 billion AAUs, with a market value of around $150 billion.

But Western states say that the former-Communist governments hold so many AAUs that they could destroy any international incentive to cut emissions after Kyoto expires at the end of 2012.

They want to see a limit on the use of AAUs post-2012.

Environment ministers had agreed to debate the issue in November after talks with Russia and Ukraine. The revival of the issue at the summit came as an unwelcome surprise to Eastern European diplomats.

"We would like to stick to the (Oct 21) agreement and address this issue before Copenhagen, but not today," Bajnai said.

Diplomats before the summit suggested that Western states could offer a deal on AAUs at the meeting in a bid to win Eastern support for a separate deal on financing the fight against climate change.