A row within the European Union's executive over plans to strengthen the bloc's fight against global warming showed no sign of cooling as the EU's top industry official warned that key parts of the plan could harm Europe's economy, according to dpa. "The de-industrialization of Europe is no solution to the world's major environmental problems," EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an exclusive interview. "If we force European businesses to produce their goods outside the EU, they will do it under less stringent environmental conditions, and pollution will rise. We would be exporting pollution and importing unemployment," he said. On Wednesday, the EU's executive, the European Commission, is set to launch a long-awaited package of proposals for how the bloc should meet its goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. The proposals are expected to include a strengthening of the EU's flagship emissions-trading scheme which would ultimately force major industries to buy permits allowing them to emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas most widely linked with global warming. The aim of the policy is to encourage Europe's industries to develop new, low-emissions technology - thus rendering them more competitive and strengthening Europe's long-term economic prospects. But Verheugen, who is charged with promoting the interests of European industry, said that industries which use large amounts of energy, such as the steel industry, are already "close to their limits" and cannot reduce their emissions much further. "If we bring energy-intensive industries into the new (auction) system completely, the result is that costs would rise drastically and we still wouldn't get a reduction of CO2," he said. "For that reason it would be right to treat energy-intensive industries as a special case. I think the solution would be to give the energy-intensive industries free permits, taking into account the need to reach the technically possible rise in energy efficiency," he said. Leaked drafts of the legislation include a plan to review the situation on global markets in 2011, with an eye to giving energy- intensive industries help against competition from less environmentally-conscious economies if necessary, but Verheugen warned that that would be too late. "It must be decided now. We can't afford years of uncertainty," he said. And he warned that separate proposals to boost the consumption of energy from renewable sources would "make energy more expensive" for both industry and consumers. But he praised the broad scope of the plans as "the beginning of a new era" and "a great opportunity to show how we can finally overcome the old opposition between environmental and economic policy." In March, the EU's leaders agreed to a legally-binding goal of reducing CO2 emissions to 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and boosting their consumption of renewable energy to 20 per cent of their total energy use. However, member states have now begun arguing over how much of a sacrifice each one should make to achieve those goals, with many using leaked commission drafts to claim that they are being asked to make an unfair contribution to the common effort.
