European Union states are debating how far they are willing to go to fight climate change as the 27-nation bloc forms what could become the world's most ambitious strategy to curb global warming.
A draft statement to be agreed at a meeting of EU environment ministers endorses a plan to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.
It also says the bloc would be willing to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 if other industrialised nations made similar cuts and "economically more advanced" developing countries contributed too.
But officials said Hungary and Poland, which joined the EU in 2004, opposed making the 20 or 30 per cent targets mandatory.
They will face pressure to back the EU line, which is likely to form the basis of the bloc's negotiating position for a global agreement to cut emissions after 2012, when the first period covered by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change ends.
"We have to push (them) to remember that they are in the European Union, and they have to accept also that our tradition is to fight against climate change," Italian Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said.rs.
"At the minimum they have to accept the cut of 20 per cent - at the minimum," he said.
Finland has also voiced opposition to a unilateral EU target, while Sweden and Denmark feel the bloc should commit to a 30 per cent reduction from the start.
Germany, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, will try to smooth differences between ministers to get unanimous support for its climate change strategy ahead of a summit of the bloc's top leaders in March.