The EU Wednesday welcomed the announcement today by the Presidents of the United States and China on their respective post-2020 actions on climate change.
This comes ahead of the G20 Summit in Brisbane, and well in advance of the Conference of theParties 21 in Paris next year.
The President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a joint statement noted that the EU agreed in October ambitious targets for 2030 with a legally binding reduction of CO2 emissions of at least 40 percent, and increases of renewable energy and energy efficiency of at least 27 percent.
"The announcements to date cover around half of the global emissions. We urge others, especially the G20 members, to announce their targets in the first half of 2015 and transparently. Only then we can assess together if our collective efforts will allow us to fulfil the goal of keeping global temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius," it said.
"In the multilateral UN negotiation process, Lima is the next milestone and we look forward to engaging with all our partners. The clock is ticking. It's time to move to action," it added.