Sweden talks tough on climate Incoming EU presidency, commissioner want international community to be more ambitious.

The European Union will maintain pressure on the United States and other rich countries to set more demanding climate goals, the incoming Swedish presidency indicated today.

Andreas Carlgren, Sweden’s environment minister, said that developed countries needed to adopt more ambitious targets to cut their emissions. “We want more, we expect more,” he said, adding: “What I am saying is based on what I expect. It is not just in my dreams.”

The EU has promised to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, extending this to 30% if others join in. “We will use this 30% target as a tool to put pressure on the other parties... we won’t upgrade until we see others make sufficient reductions,” Carlgren said.

Sweden takes over the EU’s rotating presidency at a critical moment in the build-up to UN-sponsored talks in Copenhagen in December. Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) process there are just three weeks of negotiating time left, Carlgren warned, although he saw “a lot of time” remaining for political negotiations outside the formal UN process. Next month (8-10 July), leaders will discuss climate change at the G8 and at a meeting of the Major Economies Forum, a group of the 17 biggest polluting countries.

“There is no alternative to an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen. There is no plan B,” said the Swedish minister.

Today the United States House of Representatives votes on the Waxman-Markey bill, proposing a cap-and-trade system that would lead to emission reductions of 4% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Carlgren said this was “a great step forward”, but that US targets were not in line with scientific advice: “So far we have not seen those credible pathways that could really be in line with science.”

Sweden will also have to steer the EU to agreement on a formula for spreading the cost of climate change among its members. A decision on funding is expected at the October summit of European leaders. Carlgren said a solution based on solidarity among member states would be found, although not without difficulties – “the European method has always been to move into success by crisis, by stalemate.”

He predicted that figures on finance would not come into the international negotiations until “quite late”, saying that “for developing countries it is more interesting to know how this money will be collected”.

In a separate development, Gordon Brown, the UK’s prime minister, will later today call on rich countries to provide $100 billion (€71 bn) per year by 2020 to help developing countries cut their emissions, stop deforestation and adapt to climate change.

Speaking at the European Commission’s Green Week conference, Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, spoke of the urgency of getting a deal in Copenhagen, and hinted that the world may need to go further than the consensus of limiting temperature increases to 2º C by the middle of the century. The goal of a 2º C cap is “not enough”, he said. “We should limit the rise in temperature to 1.5º C.”

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, said that the climate agenda would remain important for the EU: “Climate change has been the defining issue for this Commission and I surely expect it to be the defining issue for the next Commission”.