EU´s new climate "allies" think that it is paytime

Last year in Durban, the European Union - "the global climate change leader" - openly boastad about its alliance with a group of small island states and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). 


However, the new "allies" are now showing increasing signs of restlessness. Now, when paytime is getting closer - and the EU is in the middle of a financial crissis - the  Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) is wondering whether the "global leader" intends to stick by its costly promises. 

UN climate talks open in Germany on Monday, with the EU struggling to keep its position of a global leader.

Small developing countries that linked up with the EU in a new coalition last year say the bloc must commit to tougher emission cuts and more finance.

Existing pledges on "climate aid" run out at the end of this year, and the EU has yet to clarify what happens then.

Fortunately, the EU´s überwarmist Connie Hedegaard does not have a key to the EU´s - now more or less empty - money coffer:

Meanwhile, the Ecofin group of EU finance ministers is also meeting this week to discuss financial contributions for developing countries.

The EU has pledged - and according to its own analysis, largely committed - 7.2bn euros ($9.3bn) over the period 2010-12 as its share of the "fast-start finance" package agreed at the UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

The expectation had been that the developed world, including the EU, would begin to ramp up contributions from public and private sources in order to meet the long-term target, also agreed at Copenhagen, of providing $100bn per year by 2020.

However, a leaked draft of the Ecofin agreement seen by BBC News shows that EU ministers have not agreed what they will provide in the way of finance after 2012, nor how they will provide it.

The draft talks in terms of developed nations "needing to identify" a pathway to the $100bn target. Some money could be raised through the recently introduced charge on aviation emissions, but this is not certain.

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The representatives of the small - often corrupt - island states should understand that the "promises" made in Durban were not intended to be kept. What they can hope for - at best - is that the keepers of the EU purse will find some way of "identifying" existing aid resources, which then can be renamed as "new" funding.