Monday, January 23rd 2012, the new Belgian Prime Minister di Rupo flew to Berlin for a one-hour working lunch with his German counterpart, Chancellor Merkel, to make her personal acquaintance and prepare for the European Council meeting on January 30th.

The visit has been extremely short, no more than two hours in the German capital.

20 minutes of that time were wasted by diplomatic formalities: Berlin is one of the EU capitals that continues to practise a diplomatic protocol according to which senior foreign state guests have to parade an honour guard with military music. PM di Rupo enjoyed this “honour” even twice: at the airport and the Chancellery.

One wonders why Germany continues to be so keen on offering its guests, even those of the EU family, a protocol of past times when rulers wanted to impress their guests by magnificent castles, beautiful uniforms and military music.

It would befit the modest and cultivated President of the European Council to raise this trivial issue at one of the working dinners with his colleagues and suggest minimising protocol formalities when they visit each other: it might generate savings that might be used for charity.

After two years of intensive debating in the Council and EP the EU has cleared the path for more comprehensive recycling of the rising volume of electric and electronic waste.

By 2020, 85 per cent of the electric and electronic equipment (refrigerators, mobile phones, TVs, radios, computers, vacuum cleaners etc.) sold in the 27 member states will be subject to mandatory collection and re-cycling through retailers or other forms of collection. This target will be reached incrementally to allow for the necessary adaptations.

The existing directive 2002/96 had imposed a minimum collection rate of 4 kg/capita without taking into account steadily rising consumption and different consumption levels between member states. Considering inadequate compliance by member states the effective recycling did not exceed one third of the equipment sold in 2010.

The new EU legislation is part of an overall strategy to enhance European resource efficiency and make Europe globally more competitive. It reflects rising awareness about resource scarcity and raw material prices, especially in the electronic sector, where European dependence on rare earths, largely controlled by Chinese companies, is being painfully felt.

Though Europe recycles rising proportions of its solid waste like zinc, steel, paper or copper. But with an annual output of solid waste of 3 billion tons, of which 90 million tons hazardous substances,it is far from seeing the end of the tunnel.

The new legislation underpins the long lead times required to generate the profound behaviour changes that are necessary for society to adapt to the “age of resource scarcity” that humanity is entering: it will take the EU almost two decades, starting with the first Commission initiative in 2002, to reach satisfactory level of recycling electric and electronic waste.

The European Parliament, probably the “greenest” legislature on earth. has shown more understanding for stricter and speedier mandatory regulations than either industry or member countries. It has improved the Council draft on several important points, thanks to a tenacious rapporteur and the strong position of its Environment Committee.

Europe is far ahead of other major countries, in particular the USA and China, in terms of waste recycling. It is unbelievable that USA and China lack mandatory legislation on waste collection and recycling! The EU should once again declare its willingness to show other countries how to do it: Recycling is in the global interest. It is a precondition for long-term sustainable economic development.

Maritime transport accounts for about three per cent of global C02 emissions, as much as air transport. In the absence of an effective international jurisdiction both transport modes have so far escaped an effective curb of their emissions. This situation will change after a decision taken by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) July 15th 2011.

The IMO decision provides mandatory rules for higher energy efficiency of cargo ships that aim at reducing C02 emission by up to 30 per cent until 2030.

This is an overdue signal to the shipping industry that business as usual will be over. In view of the rapid increase of maritime transport expected for the coming decades it has become imperative to curb its C02 emissions.

New ships need improved designs of the hull, propellers and engines; owners of existing ships will need to introduce programmes for enhancing energy efficiency, e.g. reducing the speed.

For the first time, a specialised UN agency makes use of technical standards as an instrument for curbing green house gas emissions, following the example that the EU and the USA are practising for cars.

However welcome the consensus reached among the 200-odd member states last July, it is no more than a tiny beginning of much more dramatic action that will be necessary to effectively reduce C02 emissions from shipping. The hoped for 30 per cent increase of fuel efficiency until 2030 will be more than neutralised by a doubling of maritime transport. The measures so far decided will therefore only slow down the further increase of C02 emissions but not reduce them, which is necessary to cut global C02 emissions by at least 50 per cent until mid-century.

Additional short-term action should target speed and taxation of shipping fuel.

• OMI should decree speed limits for all cargo ships regardless of size or type of ship. Indeed, C02 emissions are very sensitive to speed: reducing the speed by 10 per cent cuts fuel consumption and C02 emissions by 35 per cent! This measure would therefore have a substantial and immediate impact on C02 emissions. It would be easy to monitor via the log- books, not distort competition and force ship engine designers to focus their work on fuel efficiency rather than speed.

Moreover, and may be most important from a profound cultural perspective, it would be a step towards the necessary “slowing down” all human activities !

• OMI should also persuade its member governments of the need to tax shipping fuel as an incentive for raising fuel efficiency and helping finance the UN climate fund to be established in the next few years. There is, indeed, no reason for exempting maritime transport from paying appropriate compensation for the damage they do to the global climate.

For both suggestions, which might become effective as soon as 2015, it will be very hard to obtain the necessary consensus within the OMI. The EU, winch has already signalled its preparedness to go further, will have to push for them. To that end the Commission should submit appropriate proposals.

Hopefully the ICAO will find inspiration from the IMO approach for tackling air craft emissions.

Since January 1st 2012, the EU is engaged in its most complex ever effort to mitigate international climate change: all aircraft landing and starting at EU airports will be subject to the EU emission cap and trading system that has been in force since 2005 for energy and industrial companies.

The new legislation is the result of intensive preparations and consultations at EU and international level since 2004. It aims at reversing the fast increase of green house gas emissions from air transport, registered in the past and projected into the future. Air transport accounts for almost three per cent of global green house emissions; and its share is expected to increase with rising air traffic and the positive effects from energy efficiency and renewable energies in other sectors.

Despite innumerable resolutions during the last 20 years the International Aircraft Carrier Organisation ( ICAO) has not succeeded in reaching a consensus for international action to mitigate green house gas emissions from air transport. Kerosene remains as exempt as ever from taxation, which is one of the reasons why flying is so cheap!

The EU was – once again – courageous to go ahead on its own. In doing so it had little choice but to apply its regulation to all carriers flying to and from EU airports, regardless of their nationality. A regulation limited to EU carriers only would have proved totally ineffective and discriminatory for EU carriers, impairing their competitiveness.

It was not surprising to see foreign carriers contest the legality of EU unilateral action; but they lost their case with the European Court of Justice in a landmark ruling on December 11th 2011. It was not surprising either to receive political protests and threats of retaliation from Chinese, Russian, US and other governments.

These will sooner or later calm down. The EU has prepared its legislation in full transparency, and there has been plenty of time for consultations and other countries joining the EU efforts. It should, of course, continue the dialogue with concerned governments. It might even offer to share the revenues from the emission allowances with foreign governments, provided they commit to use them for climate mitigation programmes, as spelled out in the EU Directive of November 2008.

But the key question to be asked concerns the effectiveness of the EU measures in the combat against climate change. Here lies the sore point of the “courageous EU initiative”.

As it covers only the passenger and freight air transport within the EU and between the EU and the rest of the world, which is less than one third of global air transport, its impact on global green house gas emissions will be negligible,under optimal assumptions less than one per cent reductions by 2020.

The airlines will adjust to the 20 per cent decline of emission allowances between 2012 and 2020 by introducing fuel-efficient planes, improving their capacity utilisation or reducing the number of flights. Flying will become a bit more expensive, which is overdue in a an era of excessively cheap flying.

All this is not very exciting and hardly worth the noise that has been made . The airline industry will have to live with the new burden. It will become healthier and more competitive thanks to higher fuel efficiency.

In order to make the EU initiative globally more climate relevant the EU should try to convince the USA and China to introduce comparable schemes for their air aircraft emissions.

They could either introduce their own cap and trade systems and cut aircraft emissions from their domestic flights and those with destinations to USA/China and EU.

But they might also introduce an excise tax on kerosene, which would also induce airline companies to increase fuel efficiency, but be much simpler to manage than the rather unwieldy cap and trade system. The EU should then also go for a kerosene tax, which, to b e effective, must be fixed at a high and progressively increasing level.

Hopefully, this “airline emission saga” will teach the world the necessity for leadership and more mutual comprehension. By imposing its emission trading system on every airline in the world the EU has shown leadership. It has sent a wake-up signal to its partners. But it must not stop here, but try to develop its scheme into a multilateral one embracing for a start the major transport countries.

I.

Climate change has become an intrinsic component of modern life.

It is there every morning, everywhere on earth. Winters have become much milder than 30 years ago. The weather has become whimsical: we can no longer tell what temperatures will be like the next day, they may rise or fall steeply, even double from one day to the next.

We experience long periods of drought or rain. Storms have become much more frequent and violent.

In the northern hemisphere snow and ice can no longer be taken for granted, not even in mountainous regions. Snow may turn into rain, to the discontent of hotels and the skiing community.

The Arctic Sea is likely to become largely ice-free during the summer months. This will further accelerate climate change, because the “albedo effect” will disappear in summer.

The permafrost of the Siberian and Canadian tundra will progressively disappear, leading to rising methane emissions, which are several times as dangerous for the atmosphere as C02. This will become a devastating time bomb!

Greenland will once again turn a bit “greener” leading to a slow but non-stoppable melting of its ice cover, which in turn will slowly raise sea level. But that process is most likely to be distant 100 years and more in the future.

We are becoming eye-witnesses of the script that climate scientists have written and projected 20 years ago with the first reports of the UN Climate Panel. But we are only in the very beginning of climate change;most of us do not even register the natural changes taking place around us. Though they occur at an awe-inspiring speed modern human beings have lost the sense for natural phenomena. They are getting accustomed to these changes: the younger generation has not known different weather conditions and adapts to them as it has to so many changes in daily life that are part of modern civilisation. About half of of the seven billion human beings on earth simply do not care: metropolitan areas appear to protect them, for the time being, against climate change.

The imperceptible way in which climate change occurs makes it enormously difficult to mobilise people and act against its causes. What should the individual do against it? Why should he or she act at all? After all, so far the repercussions have been rather benign, sometimes even positive.

The number and intensity of natural disasters that may be attributed to climate change is not such as to provoke the right reactions: They are spread across the globe and over time; their global damage has hardly risen during the last 30 years. In 2011 it amounted to about $ 150 billion. That is peanuts, noticed only by insurance companies.

II.

There is a consensus among climate scientists about the human-made nature of climate change, essentially C02 emissions from energy generation/consumption, transport, agriculture and deforestation. But this consensus is far from being shared across the world. Powerful business groups, particularly in the USA, continue to deny any link between human activity and climate change. And most governments are too weak and concerned with short-time political issues to worry about the future of the planet.

Climate scientists insist on the need for global C02 emissions to fall at least by half until the middle of the century if humanity wants to prevent irreversible damage to the earth’s eco-system.

This will only happen if the global economic product declines by half until 2050 or if humanity succeeds in making production, transport and energy generation largely C02-free, both of which are highly unlikely. On the contrary, humanity is set to increase its economic product at a rate of some 4 per cent annually during the coming 20 years, generating a roughly equal increase of C02 emissions.

The EU is the only group of countries committed to a gradual reduction of its emissions. But its accounts for only14 per cent of global emissions, declining progressively to less than 10 per cent as other regions boost their economies.

The perspectives are therefore very gloomy. The most recent Durban Climate Conference has not fundamentally improved this pessimistic outlook. It has produced no more than a “promise” by the main emitter countries to prepare a comprehensive climate compact by 2015 that should enter into force after 2020. There is no substantive agreement on the nature of such a climate compact, the actions to be taken or the burden sharing between developed, emerging and developing countries.

The USA remains as hostile as ever to binding commitments. Only China seems to have understood that it might suffer seriously from accelerating climate change and benefit from a world-wide boost of renewable energies and energy efficiency.

III.

Where to go from here?

• Engage in massive lobbying and advertising campaigns in the main emitter countries to prepare the ground for the harsh political decisions that need to be taken in the next eight years. It should focus on the youngsters who will suffer most from the failure to cope with climate change. The UN should assume the responsibility for organising these with the assistance of European countries that should volunteer to share their experience.
• Demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of replacing the bulk of fossil energy inputs by renewable energies and energy efficiency.
• Demonstrate the possibility of mobilising the necessary financing, essentially private sources and long-term credits from national and multilateral financing institutions, e.g. World Bank and regional development banks.
• Build climate and energy strategies for 2020-50, at national and global levels.
• Exploit the EU experience in elaborating energy and climate road maps and offer large-scale technical assistance to all countries eager to learn from it.
• Establish “strategic climate partnerships” between EU and like-minded countries. China should become such a partner despite the present tensions about the inclusion of air traffic into the EU emission trading system.

In North America and Northern Europe roughly more than one third of CO2 emissions are due to heating, which is correlated to average temperatures from October to April.

The latest estimates of the German aggregate energy consumption and CO2 emissions in 2011 confirm this rule of thumb.

The total German energy consumption is expected to fall by an impressive five per cent over 2010, the CO2 emissions to decline by three per cent. These reductions result essentially from high temperatures prevailing in most of 2011; assuming “normal” temperatures the CO2 emissions would have gone up by one per cent.

In a medium-term perspective, the German record of energy saving is much less impressive than German energy and environmental officials make us believe:

a reduction of the total energy consumption by 10 per cent during the last 20 years, since 1990, and just five per cent during the last five years, when European climate policy has started to grip, is nothing to be proud of for a country with slow economic growth and a huge energy efficiency potential inherited in Eastern Germany.

Despite the elaborate and expensive promotion programme for wind and solar power the German share of renewable energy does not yet exceed 20 per cent for electricity and 10 per cent for all energy combined.

One should draw three conclusions from this brief analysis:

• Always look at the fine print of any data on energy consumption and CO2 emissions:
• Continue to insulate buildings despite lower winter temperatures. Heating remains the single biggest item of energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
• Accelerate the pace towards higher energy efficiency and more renewable energies, in both developed and emerging countries. Humanity cannot afford to progress at the EU`s snail pace during the last 20 years.

The 17th International Climate Conference in Durban has terminated its two weeks` work with a procedural conclusion to work for an international climate agreement to be signed by 2015.

This result owes much to the tenacity and negotiating skill of the EU delegation, but also to the EU`s credible climate policy, demonstrated once again by its pledge for additional emission cutting in conformity with the Kyoto Protocol.

An effective and comprehensive climate agreement by 2015 will be extremely hard to negotiate.

• It will require a change in negotiating techniques: instead of convoking huge annual gatherings the international community should advance informally through countless bilateral and multilateral meetings, where participants exchange their views and experience on how to best reduce fossil energy consumption without inhibiting economic development.
• But it will also need more focus on substance: how will different countries best meet the requirement of lowering their fossil energy consumption and C02 emissions? How to cope with air and maritime transport? How to preserve forests? How to cope with ultra-dangerous methane emissions from cattle and sheep raising? And, last not least, how to account for population growth that may contribute up to one third to the increase of green house gas emissions until 2050?

Big formal meetings like Durban or Cancun should take place after crucial questions concerning the content of the future climate compact have been clarified. The EU should therefore try to convince its partners to delay the C0P 18 scheduled in Qatar for the end of 2012, when there will not yet be a new US Administration, to the end of 2013.

The EU offers the only paradigm of an effective national climate policy. It should therefore share its experience with all countries interested in following its example.

China should be the EU`s priority partner. As the biggest emitter of green house gases its action will be felt at the global scale.

It has become much more aware of climate risks than 10 years ago, due to the heavy toll it pays to climate change by increasingly damaging floods and droughts. As the world`s leading technology provider for wind and solar energies on the one hand and rare earths for their manufacturing on the other, it has realised that energy efficiency and renewable energies could become the twin key drivers of its future economic development.

It aims at pricing CO2 emissions into the costs of energy and thereby exert more pressure on business to use less fossil energy and use it more efficiently. It has therefore decided to introduce an emission cap and trade system similar to that of the EU as of 2015. Both sides are engaged in an intensive and constructive exchange of views and experience.

The next stage in Chinese-EU climate cooperation should be the elaboration of parallel energy/climate road maps up to 2050. The EU has already prepared a draft road map that aims at reducing CO2 emissions by 80 per cent until mid-century. It would be a triumph for global climate policy if China were able to align itself on a similar goal.

Both sides should try to figure out the implications for China of such an ambitious objective:

• How can energy efficiency be lifted?
• What are the limits to wind, solar and hydro power?
• What investments in smart grids will be necessary to insure stable supply?
• How will mobility be ensured by “green power”?
• What energy prices are “sustainable”?
• Will green power be competitive with coal, if all coal power plants were to be equipped with CCS installations?
• What building standards will have to be introduced to ensure “zero-mission buildings”, which will be vital for achieving an 80 per cent reduction of C02 emissions?
• Is such an energy revolution compatible with rising living standards?
• These will be some of the questions which Chinese and European policy makers will need to answer.

Chinese-EU energy and climate talks should be open to all parties seriously interested in tackling climate change.

Australia, that has recently introduced an ambitious C02-emission taxation scheme, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and South Africa might be potential candidates to join as observers or active participants.

The UN Secretariat for Climate Change will, of course, have to be invited to be able to coordinate the various bilateral dialogues.

Any such talks should remain informal and confidential. They should not turn into diplomatic proceedings where participants would have to commit their governments. That would doom them to failure.

But the EU should do more than engage in bilateral or multilateral dialogues.

It should also start reflections on the structure of the future climate compact and share these with China and other partners.

Here are some elements for further thought.

• The climate compact should be a composite of specific agreements dealing with various aspects of climate mitigation, among these one for C02 emissions, methane emissions, and forest preservation.
• C02 emissions have to dealt with under three headings: emissions falling under national sovereignty, emissions from shipping and air transport.
• A 2050 objective for global and per capita C02 emissions will be required, in combination with a global trajectory and interim check points in 2030 and 2040. These objectives should be consistent with the desirable level of global warming until 2100.
• Only major C02 emitter countries will have to join, say those 20-odd countries that account for 75 per cent of global emissions. This will substantially facilitate the negotiations .
• Each of these countries will have to elaborate and submit to peer review energy road maps until 2050, which set out the targets to be achieved and the instruments to be put in place. Countries will have little choice but to set a price for each ton of C02 emitted. They can do so indirectly by fixing “emission caps”, as the EU has done, and allow the emission rights to be auctioned. Or they can follow the Australian method of imposing a C02 tax.
• In addition, all countries will need complementary instruments , like fuel efficiency standards for trucks, cars, and machinery as well as insulation standards for buildings. Ideally these should also be laid down in specific international agreements, e.g. for automobile efficiency standards or the ban of incandescent lamps
• The pace of reduction will depend on the level of per capita emissions.

The USA will have to reduce their per capita emissions from 20 tons in 2010 to 2 tons in 2050, the likely sustainable global average by the middle of the century. China will need to reduce from 6 to 2 tons. It can therefore proceed at a more leisurely pace.

The debate on the relative rates of reduction will be the toughest aspect of the future negotiations.

• The compact must provide for a very strict reporting and monitory system. Any deviations must be made public immediately: and flawed countries will have to pay some sort of penalty. This will also be a hard nut to crack.
• For shipping and air transport the most efficacious system would be a global excise tax on kerosene and bunker to be imposed by the UN, the revenues to be transferred to the global climate fund. Compliance with the taxation will have to ensured by very strict mandatory accounting systems. Alternatively world airlines may also align on the cap and trade system the EU will impose as of 2012.
• Methane emissions are twenty times as toxic for the climate as C02. Presently there are two major sources of methane emissions: cattle/ sheep raising and wetland paddy rice cultivation. The first priority will be to reduce the global consumption of beef and lamb, which will be increasingly unsustainable as the global population rises. A substantial level of taxation seems to be the most expeditious way of reducing meat consumption, while encouraging cattle/sheep farmers to intensify research for varieties emitting nor less methane.The agreement on methane emissions could be limited to less than 20 countries that raise the bulk of cattle and sheep: Argentina, Brazil, USA, Australia, New Zealand and EU would certainly have to sign up.
• The 30 odd countries endowed with big forest areas should commit to protect these and prevent a temporary explosion of C02 emissions due to deforestation. The outlines of such an agreement exist in the REDD programmes, on which negotiations should build.
• Last not least, a small number of countries should take commitments to slow down their demographic growth. The expected increase of world population by an extra two billion ( 30 per cent) until the middle of the century, will be one of the driving forces of future green house emissions and global resource stress. It is therefore legitimate to ask the governments concerned, mostly very poor countries with extremely low per capita emissions, to make their contribution to a sustainable world, and the governments of wealthy countries to offer the assistance required to prevent unwanted births.
  There is no need to finalise negotiations in these different fields simultaneously. They should be carried to the point of initialling the texts for signature in 2015 with all other draft agreements that should be ready by then.

This is a huge programme to negotiate within three years! Time will therefore be of the essence. Let us hope that those who have agreed on this tight schedule in Durban are fully aware of the time constraint and will lose no time to get down to serious work.

In 10 years Germany will have to do without nuclear power, which contributed 20 per cent to German electricity supply in 2010. Will Germany replace nuclear power essentially through coal and gas; or will it be able to make a big leap forward towards renewables and higher energy efficiency?

Six months after the German parliament decided to quit nuclear energy the debate on how to face the challenge of living without it is getting more intensive.

Whatever the differences on details of the implementation, four key parameters are no longer controversial:

• Germany needs to lower its electricity consumption projections.

This requires investing much more in efficiency, above all by discouraging consumers to use electricity at peak hours. To this end, the country has to allow electricity rates fluctuating according to supply and demand and to invest massively in intelligent transmission and metering systems.

In addition, Germany needs to boost the thermal renovation of its buildings, the single biggest, but hidden energy potential, though unrelated to the closure of nuclear reactors.

• It must rapidly extend its grid.

This is a precondition for balancing the enormous fluctuations in the generation of wind and solar electricity and preventing much wind and solar power being wasted due to the absence of demand.

To that end, Germany needs to urgently implement at least 10 major projects for grid extension.

• In order to ensure its security of supply Germany will rely on a combination of wind parks and photovoltaic installations on the one hand and gas-fired hybrid (thermal and electric) power plants .

The latter, which will be much more flexible than nuclear plants, intervene when wind and solar power will not suffice to cover the aggregate demand.

• The grid will constitute a gigantic storage; hydro-power from Norway and pump-storage from the Alps and other mountains will be complementary. Battery, hydrogen or heat storage will be for the long term.

The German network system regulator has outlined scenarios for the German power mix in 2022. These show that Germany will be able to shut down all its nuclear power plants, even while increasing electricity consumption and emitting less C02 than in 2010!

This will be possible by

• trebling the photo-voltaic power capacity. In 2022, PV installations might reach a capacity of 55 GW, 20 per cent more than that of coal power plants;
• boosting off-shore and on-shore wind parks. In 10 years, wind will be Germany’s major source of electricity generation;
• replacing outdated coal power plants by efficient gas turbines.

Gas power plants and a sophisticated network of smart high tension transmission lines and pump storage power generation will be crucial for the security of supply, compensating for the intermittent supply from wind and solar sources.

To get from the scenario to reality will require huge investments by utilities and network companies . The government will have to follow-up very closely and, if necessary, intervene by appropriate regulations or financial/tax incentives.

In conclusion, it remains a gamble; the deal is doable though at a substantial loss of capital due to the premature write off of major components of the present power infrastructure. In the end Germany will dispose of the most advanced power infrastructure in the world.

Sometimes stupid conflicts between people, families or countries persist over many years because of intransigence of the parties or lack of proper outside mediators. The conflict between Greece and Macedonia is one of these. It lasts ever since the breakup of Yugoslavia two decades ago and the independence of the Yugoslav republics , all of which aspire for EU membership.

The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia declared its independence in 1991 under the name of Republic of Macedonia, which no country objected to except Greece, the northern province of which also bears the name of the ancient empire of Alexander the Great.

Greece reproached the newly independent Republic with territorial aspirations, which had, indeed, existed during a short period in the aftermath of the second world war.

The Macedonian leaders were not helpful in calming Greek apprehensions. They chose the “Vergina Sun”, the historic symbol of Greek Macedonia, as their national flag and installed a huge monument of Alexander the Great in their capital.

Since 1995 Macedonia has changed its flag and also agreed to use the name of “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM) in its international relations. In return, Greece promised not to block Macedonia’s applications to international organisations.

Thus Macedonia (FYROM) was admitted to the UN, the Council of Europe, WTO, CEFTA, EBRD, WHO, IMF etc. But for practical reasons more than 100 UN countries, including USA, Russia and UK refer to the country as “Republic of Macedonia”. Greece has essentially lost its battle on the name of its northern neighbour a long time ago.

In 2008 it has reopened the issue by blocking Macedonia`s NATO membership under the official designation of FYROM. NATO membership being Macedonia`s top foreign policy priority, the government took the matter to the ICJ in the Hague, which, in early December 2011, ruled 15 against 1 in favour of Macedonia. On the basis of this ruling NATO should resume Macedonia`s application, ignoring possible Greek objections.

In parallel, the EU should pursue Macedonia` membership bid, which is pending since 2005. The EP has invited the European Commission to open negotiations. There is no urgency for membership. Iceland, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey are in the pipeline. But in 2014 negotiations should finally start in the hope that by that time the Greek political class will have realised that Macdonia`s EU membership, far from representing a menace, will be beneficial for Greece as one of Macedonia`s main economic partners.

In the course the next two years the EU should therefore discreetly remind the Greek political elite that it expects it to make the necessary gestures for normalising relations with all Balkan countries.

Diplomatic conferences rarely end with a failure! Diplomats do not like being accused of failure. This goes in particular for long conferences with thousands of participants which cost millions of euro.

The 17th international climate conference, COP 17 in the official jargon, that ended in the dawn of Sunday 11th December, 36 hours after its planned end, is no exception to that rule. After 13 days of speeches and endless discussions on actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change the key actors – EU, USA, China, India, Brazil and Japan – did not want to return home empty-handed.

In the early hours of December 11th , amid confusion that prevented many delegates from following, the COP 17 plenary “adopted” what will be called the “Durban Platform”, the text of which is not yet available on the Internet 24 hours after the end of the Conference.

In the usual self-congratulatory mood the key negotiators appeared to be very satisfied with the results. Nobody had still expected a positive outcome after the final days` aggressive negotiations.

As far as one can judge on the basis of scant press briefings the conference has reached four results:

• The 194 parties will start negotiating as soon as possible a comprehensive, legally binding international agreement that is to take effect as of 2020.
• The EU, Norway and Switzerland will extend the application of the 1997 Kyoto protocol for another five-year period.
• The $ 200 billion climate fund will enter functioning in parallel with the comprehensive climate agreement.
• The parties agreed on procedures for reporting and monitoring green house gas emissions, which will accompany the future climate agreement.

A priory, this sounds quite impressive. But when taking a closer look one discovers little substance and much hot air.

• From the global climate point of view it is unacceptable to wait another eight years before a comprehensive climate agreement might finally enter into force.

By 2020 global green house gas emissions will have risen by about one third and have reached 56 Gt, making it illusory to contain global within two centigrade, the objective the international community had fixed in 2009 at the Copenhagen COP15 meeting.

Reducing green house emissions must start today with a massive deployment of wind and solar energy and increase of energy efficiency. But nothing of the sort happens and there is no prospect for a change.

The emerging countries are increasing their emissions at a frightening speed of more than three per cent annually; the developed countries, most of all the the USA, continue increasing them by more than one percent per year. Only the EU has succeeded in slightly reducing them, but by less than two percent per year; but with a contribution of less than 13 per cent to global emissions it has ceased to be a major agent of climate change.

Waiting therefore means that the climate will change much faster than human behaviour, with catastrophic consequences for human life and civilisation. The the human species proves incapable of responding to its most serious long-term challenge: it will have to experience more dramatic catastrophes before starting to act seriously.

Even by 2020 effective action is by no means guaranteed. Nobody can be sure that the US Congress will finally adopt the draconian measures that will be needed. For this to happen many more devastating natural disasters need to occur and convince the most reactionary Congress members believe that human -made climate change is at play.

• The extension of the Kyoto Protocol by only 29 European countries is irrelevant for the climate. It helps the EU bolster its international reputation and justify internal climate measures decided as early as 2007 to its own citizens. It also reduces the burden of its climate policy, as investments in renewable energies abroad are credited to the domestic emission balance.
• The UN climate fund had already been agreed upon last year at Cancun. But the modalities concerning sources and use of finance still remain unclear. In a way, the Fund is the sugar held out to developing countries for giving their assent to the deal, though they are not really expected to reduce their minimal emissions that have hardly any bearing on the global climate, except for deforestation.
• The agreement on reporting and monitoring is a crucial element for both the EU and the USA to subscribe to any international climate agreement. It is therefore a strictly necessary element for the future.

In conclusion, to make the best of what is a meagre deal the EU must continue maintaining pressure on the key players, the USA, China and India. Before 2013 nothing of importance is likely to happen because of elections in the USA and China.

But the EU should keep the fire burning at small flame.

It should push the Climate Secretariat to improve update monitoring of emissions.

It might also lend a helping hand to the logistics in major meetings and offer short internships at the EU Council Secretariat.

But above all, it should intensify seminars between European officials and their counterparts abroad on the preparation of long-term road maps and effective incentives for the promotion of energy efficiency and renewable energies.

This sort of discreet but intensive climate and energy diplomacy might prove to be the surest way of accelerating the awareness for climate issues and, more important, the economic feasibility of effective climate policy. The EU should therefore dispatch one specialist in energy and climate to every major EU Delegation abroad.