Final decision to be taken by EU leaders

European Union leaders meeting in Brussels later this week will have to decide whether to agree on binding energy targets being proposed by the European Commission after EU foreign ministers failed to hammer out a deal yesterday.

Malta is one of the member states opposed to binding national targets.

The European Commission is proposing that member states should agree to provide 20 per cent of their energy needs in 2020 from renewable energy sources and 10 per cent of transport fuel from biofuels by 2010.

However, Malta, represented at yesterday's meeting by Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, argued against the setting of mandatory national targets and expressed itself in favour of voluntary targets instead.

Sources close to yesterday's General Affairs Council meeting said that although Malta is in principle in favour of the efforts being made by the EU to reduce its dependency on oil and to increase energy production from climate-neutral sources, it can't agree with the same targets being set for every member state because each has its own different circumstances. Malta argues that the target should be a general one for the EU-27.

Its stand is shared by many other member states including Slovenia, Latvia, Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland and Greece who have maintained that it would be unfair to shackle governments to inflexible targets.

On the other hand, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Italy are backing the Commission's call for fixed numerical targets. Their main argument is that if these are not mandatory, they will never materialise.

Speaking during a press conference after yesterday's meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that no compromise has been reached over the issue and the debate and probable decision was now in the EU leaders' court.

"We are still hoping that theirs will be a favorable decision this next Thursday at the EU summit," he said.

It has been acknowledged, however, that the biofuels target will be almost impossible for Malta to achieve due to the small size of its territory. German Energy Minister Michael Glos said a few days ago that this target should be for the entire EU and not for individual member states so that small member states such as Malta and Luxembourg, which will have to import biofuels which they cannot produce at home, can have room for manoeuvre.