Leaders of the 27-nation EU have pledged they will stick to a pricey plan for deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, saying the recent meltdown of financial markets must not deter efforts to combat global warming.
After presiding at a two-day EU summit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday that despite some misgivings about the cost, “climate change is so important that we cannot use the financial and economic crisis as a pretext for dropping it.”
The summit capped weeks of turmoil that devastated financial markets around the globe, sparked fears of a serious economic slowdown and revealed EU governments stumped for a coherent approach to protect banks, mortgage lenders and depositors.
Only in the last 10 days did the EU put together a US$2.3 trillion emergency bailout for the banking sector that was approved at the summit.
Taking a cue from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leaders called for a global approach to revamping the world’s financial system in hopes of preventing a repeat of the credit crisis.
Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso are to meet with US President George W. Bush today at Camp David, Maryland, to lay the groundwork for a global summit to overhaul the financial system.
Ideas that the Europeans discussed included a meeting of the world’s major economic powers — including China, Russia and India — next month, possibly in New York, similar to the 1944 meeting in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, that laid down rules for international trade and financial relations.
Other issues the Europeans want discussed are supervision and regulation of markets, reductions in bank secrecy, early warning systems for detecting impending crises, and a framework for a rapid, coordinated international response to a crisis.
For the first time, the leaders took a step toward EU supervision of banks — something Britain and other nations have resisted for years.
They said national watchdogs need to meet at least once a month, and they also set up a financial crisis group to swap information.
“We want a package that will be tolerable for the poorer member states,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
Sarkozy said he would try to forge a fair deal for sharing the burden, to avoid penalizing the bloc’s former communist nations that depend largely on carbon-heavy coal for their power.
The EU climate package includes steps to force major polluters such as energy generators, steel makers and cement producers to pay billions into a cap-and-trade emissions program costing nearly US$70 billion a year in polluter fees.
The plan is to enact the package next year and draw the US and other nations into a broad international program for dealing with global warming.
To help European industry at a time of economic slowdown, EU leaders said they will consider a stimulus package. Sarkozy pointed particularly to the auto industry, which is demanding a US$54.5 billion bailout fund.
“Can you ask the European car industry to provide clean cars, change the whole industrial apparatus, without giving them a helping hand?” Sarkozy said.
He said European car makers might need an injection of state cash, similar to the US government’s US$25 billion low-interest credit line for General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC announced last month.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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