Seven European Union newcomer states want the security of energy supplies to be included in the bloc's planned climate strategy, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday.
"The entire European Union has understood the need for secure energy supplies. We want to deftly tie this to the climate package," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw after talks with six other prime ministers.
"Not all the proposals in the (EU's) climate and energy package increase the security of energy supplies from our point of view. This is why we will be looking for real security of supply," he said.
In a bid to curb global warming, the European Commission has set a December target for the EU to adopt a package cutting emissions of greenhouse gases by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.
But Poland, which relies on coal-fired power plants for almost all its electricity, and six other EU newcomers with similar problems, oppose specific measures proposed by the commission to achieve the target, arguing that the cost could stunt economic growth.
"We want an energy-climate package that will not threaten our economies," Tusk said Wednesday, repeating an argument he raised at an EU summit in Brussels last month.
Italy has also slammed the possible high cost of the EU's proposed package to industry during hard economic times.
Pressured by veto threats from Poland and Italy, EU leaders have agreed the bloc's package will be adopted unanimously by all 27 EU member states — or not at all — at their next summit on December 11-12.
The summit will coincide with the December 1-12 United Nations climate summit in Poznan, western Poland.
Poland's liberal and EU-friendly Tusk was speaking after hosting a meeting of leaders from the Visegrad Group states — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — and the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
All are former communist states that are now members of both the EU and the NATO.
