The BBC World Service broadcast a great report this morning about the new climate deal struck in Brussels by EU leaders on the package of measures to fight global warming.  A move that, they say, confirms Europe as the world leader in fighting climate change. The plan sets out how 27 member-countries will cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.

EU leaders have been discussing the so-called “20/20/20″ package to tackle climate change and concessions to limit its impact on struggling industries. This would require:

• 20% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels
• 20% increase in use of renewable energy by 2020
• 20% cut in energy consumption through improved energy efficiency by 2020

Rumour had it that the talks would go on long into the night leaving frazzled heads of state at their wits end, however by mid-afternoon today the chairman of the talks, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, faced the cameras saying it was all done and dusted! President Sarkozy claimed it as a personal victory and said:

“finally, on the energy and climate package, this is quite historic, what is happening here. You will not find another continent in the world  that has given itself such binding rules that we have done here unanimously…”

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the plans “the most ambitious proposals anywhere in the world.” Also adding, “Europe has today passed its credibility test. We mean business when we talk about climate,” and appealing to US President-elect Barack Obama to follow Europe’s lead.

But not everybody is jumping up and down about it. Critics said the package – which includes concessions to heavy industry and Eastern European countries worried that pollution cuts will harm their economic growth – did not go far enough. Sanjeev Kumar of WWF went as far as saying “this is a flagship EU policy with no captain, a mutinous crew and several gaping holes in it.”

The concessions included trading schemes to give Eastern European countries more time to come on board and handouts for countries more reliant on heavy industry like Germany on on coal fired power, as in Poland. European industries exposed to international competition will get free emissions permits if they face a 5% increase in costs – which could cover 90% of EU industry as it stands at the moment – the power sectors were also partially exempt from paying for emissions permits, and they will get 70% of them free initially. So, all in all, this is far from the ideal that environmentalists had campaigned for initially.

Claude Turmes is Vice president of  the European Green Party and also chief negotiator in the European Parliament on the anti-climate change package. He said he was bitterly disappointed, stating that EU leaders have decided that only 1/5th of the emissions reductions will be in Europe and the other 4/5th will be dealt with elsewhere.

Instrumental in the early discussions, he says that the renewable energy portion of the package has remained untouched but the cutting of emissions has been severely degraded and unless significant changes are made to the structure of how we operate globally then the citizens of this planet do not have the luxury of time of their side.

Scientists say carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by 25-40% by 2020 for there to be a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.  This package only deals with a 20% reduction, due to the above concessions that the EU has made to industries because of the economic recession, and this will make it very, very difficult to achieve the 30% figure that scientists say is really needed.

While all this has been going on, a UN climate conference has been taking place in Poznan, Poland, where former US presidential candidate John Kerry said the United States was set to lead the world towards a new climate deal. Mr Kerry, who is representing Mr Obama, described the EU deal as “an enormous act of leadership” that would have an impact on talks about a future global pact. If the rest of the world agrees to a new UN climate deal next year, the EU says it is prepared to go further, cutting emissions by 30%.

The fact that EU leaders have agreed they can meet the promised 20% target is good, says the BBC’s environment analyst, Roger Harrabin, because without it there would be no global deal.

So, while not ideal, is it at least a step in the right direction?