France – Addressing the Challenge of Climate Change

Copenhagen, 18 December 2009
(excerpts)

President Sarkozy - Press Conference

THE PRESIDENT – (…) We’ve got an accord. Right up to the last moment, the French delegation and I were pondering the right course of action. I’m going to report to you as briefly as possible on the problems, what was adopted and what was committed. (…)

EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT ORGANIZATION

THE PRESIDENT – (…) Europe will propose the creation of a European Environment Organization which will have two responsibilities: monitoring each country’s environmental commitments and the honouring of the financial commitments vis-à-vis the poorest countries. Why at European level? Because we didn’t get it at global level. But Europe is determined to lead the way and this Organization will, of course, be called on to accept the candidature of every country wishing to join in its work. (…)

AQUILA G8/MEF/COPENHAGEN/WEO

Q. – I’d like to know how the commitments China, India and the United States made in Aquila and at the Major Economies Forum differ from what they’ve done here. I can’t see how they do, since they had already recognized the 2º and there’s nothing binding. What is there that’s new?

THE PRESIDENT – To my knowledge, there was no commitment in Aquila. But if you want something else: there was no €100 billion in Aquila, so no commitment could have been made – I mean the €100 billion [for the poor countries] as from 2020. The €30 billion over the first three years wasn’t on the table in Aquila. The commitment to put the emissions reduction targets in the annex wasn’t there at all in Aquila. And there was no commitment, in writing, to meet the objective of limiting the temperature rise to 2º in Aquila either. And then there’s innovative financing: when Bernard Kouchner and I were talking about the possibility of taxing financial transactions, do you remember what people said? There was nothing about that at all. 20% for the forests, to combat deforestation; everyone can clearly see that the best way to fight emissions is to combat deforestation, there was nothing about that in Aquila. Nor about the 40% for Africa. As you know, we were still working on the Millennium Development Goals, with participants voicing scepticism on the issue.

So if you want to ask me what’s missing, it’s clearer to get straight to the point. To my mind, two things are missing: the 50% target in 2050, which we’d have preferred to see kept. It wasn’t possible, from this point of view it’s a disappointment, even though we’re keeping the 80% target. Am I making myself clear here?

And the second disappointment is that there’s no World Environment Organization, even though we took advantage of the meeting to push for the European Environment Organization which is destined to become a world organization. Those are the two points on which we didn’t get satisfaction. (…)

FRANCE/EUROPE/COPENHAGEN ACCORD

Q. – You began the press conference by telling us: “right up to the last moment, I myself, the French delegation were pondering the right course of action”. Did you really contemplate not signing this accord, rejecting it? And, secondly, why do you think that this accord, which doesn’t fully satisfy you, will be more effective than the huge commotion which the European Union would have caused by not signing it?

THE PRESIDENT – So long as we weren’t certain that every country was committing itself on paper to specific emissions reduction targets, we couldn’t sign the accord. We could agree to giving up the 50% cut provided we had the 2º, plus the breakdown of the countries’ reductions. This was precisely the point at issue. Am I making myself understood? The 2º is the general target, with the 50% cut the specific objective required to limit the temperature increase to 2º. We can agree to giving up the 50% emissions reduction in 2050 if we’ve got every country’s goals for immediately cutting emissions; otherwise it isn’t possible – I hope my explanations aren’t too obscure – you see, we can swap a collective target of a 50% cut in 2050 for targets individually allocated, country by country, immediately; by “immediately” I mean between 2010-2015. So long as we weren’t sure of getting that, we couldn’t agree.

Secondly, so long as there was no agreement on innovative financing, I tell you, I wouldn’t have committed France. The ministers, Jean-Louis [Borloo] and I talked about this involving pretty substantial sums, even though it’s the whole international community which is committing itself to it. So the deadlock on these points was lifted only at the last moment, since the Chinese Prime Minister was no longer even at the conference centre.

Q. – And if Europe hadn’t signed?

THE PRESIDENT – Had Europe not signed, we would have found ourselves in the paradoxical situation of it being easier to explain that we wanted all or nothing, but the consequence of refusing to sign was that it would have allowed China and India to exempt themselves from any form of limitation. It might seem paradoxical to take the view that Copenhagen isn’t ambitious enough to constrain Chine and India, but with no Copenhagen accord, there’s nothing. (…)

POLITICAL/LEGALLY-BINDING ACCORD

Q. – This accord seems to be a political rather than legally-binding one since it didn’t prove possible to make a legal one. The countries are going to be left the task of translating the text and this accord into their legislative systems. When is there going to be an international legal text? In Mexico?

THE PRESIDENT – First of all, there was never a question of producing a legally- binding text in Copenhagen, because I don’t know how we’d have been able to prepare a treaty. I told Mr Ban Ki-moon back in September in New York: “Don’t start working on a document several hundred pages long, we’d never be able to get through it”. So it’s always been agreed that Copenhagen was a political accord. For the rest, we, Europe and the United States, are clearly calling for this political document to be transformed into a treaty. This is why France is supporting Germany’s organization of an intermediate summit in Bonn: this is why we have ensured that the terms of reference given to President Calderon for Mexico are as broad as possible; and this is why a lot of us will be asking in Mexico for the Copenhagen political accord to be transformed into a treaty. This is of course encountering opposition – today as I speak – from China and India. (…)

CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

Q. - (…) You mentioned earlier some organizational problems at the conference, the Danish presidency has very probably, perhaps, something to do with the question you were pondering, but, despite everything, aren’t you drawing deeper lessons for the actual climate negotiating process? There’s something I’m wondering about: basically haven’t we got a sort of circular process: we give negotiators a brief, for example two years ago in Bali, then they crunch the data for two years and, at the end of the two years, the political leaders, you President Sarkozy, the other heads of State, arrive and in a way sanction a failure, the failure of the negotiators and the brief given to them at the outset.

THE PRESIDENT – (…) This obviously poses, you’re absolutely right, the problem of the way the international community is organized. Let’s not attribute more responsibility to the Danish presidency than it deserves. The Danish Prime Minister did everything he could, he did it pretty well in fact, but let’s say that the UN decision-making process…We’ve reached the limits of a system which I’ve consistently criticized – pardon, at any rate since the day I was elected. The role that a number of us have played wasn’t ours to play. We didn’t play it for pleasure, but because things weren’t moving forward. I have a high regard for Mr Ban Ki-moon; I support him; he’s a man who really deserves respect and consideration, but clearly the limitations of the UN process, which consists in never holding votes, in deciding by consensus and remaining the organization it was in the twentieth century, have become evident – yes, and your question is wholly pertinent – it consists in having the right to make progress on every issue only if everyone agrees. Can you imagine this with 192 countries? It’s a process which today is on its last legs.

Secondly, it’s a process which doesn’t give the major emerging countries their rightful place. Think about it: when India has to be asked to play her full part in protecting the planet, India who has hundreds of millions of inhabitants bordering on the most worrying poverty, it’s absolutely normal for Prime Minister Singh to say: “listen, we emit very little carbon, but we’ve got a lot of poverty, we’re afraid you will prevent us from developing”. If India were a member of the Security Council, it would be far easier to get her to shoulder a greater proportion of her responsibilities. Seeing a system like this makes it blindingly obvious.

So the difficulties of organizing this conference demonstrate the limitations of a UN system which is on its last legs. This doesn’t mean the UN is unnecessary, quite the contrary, you’ve clearly understood that we need the UN, but we very clearly need an organization where decisions can be taken, where the decision-making organs are far more representative. It was the same for the G8 which was on its last legs, whereas the G20 can take decisions.

I guarantee you that there won’t be any more conferences meeting under conditions where no one can take decisions and where we have to be in permanent crisis to have a chance of getting a decision worthy of the name. It’s totally clear. Do you realize that to get a night-time meeting, we had to get to crisis point? Several times, we were completely deadlocked. Because when every country has a say on minor as well as major issues, how do you take decisions? It means you give the country which wants to hold things up absolutely gigantic power, because it knows perfectly well that decisions are by consensus and so it can block things. But in fact the problem goes far beyond that: there was the issue of the various delegations’ representation. Here too, the UN system where a country can have itself represented by its ambassador or some other senior official, whilst others are represented by their countries’ highest elected authority isn’t possible! In the G20, heads of State and governments are there in an official capacity. In the new EU institutional system we’ve decided that we wouldn’t send representatives to the European Council. Heads of State and governments themselves attend European Council meetings. Here in the UN process, you can be represented by an ambassador. For example, we had here the ambassador of Sudan who addressed the meeting many times – as was in fact his right – alongside the President of the United States and Chancellor Merkel. We haven’t all got the same level of political responsibility and ability to take decisions.

The system is on its last legs! We want it changed. Moreover, under these conditions it’s a miracle that we’ve nevertheless managed to come up with an accord worthy of the name – we can regret that it isn’t more ambitious, but it’s an accord which indisputably moves things on. So the system has to change and will change.

Thank you for asking this question. I don’t know if my argument has convinced you; and this goes far beyond Mr Ramussen who did his level best, under extremely difficult conditions, you understand, but the problem lies in the process itself. The G20 was set up because the other fora weren’t working well enough. Here too, the issue goes beyond Mr Ban Ki-moon. It’s simply that the international community has changed and has to give itself modern rules to take decisions and responsibility for its choices. (…).