European environment ministers on Friday wrapped up a two-day meeting that exposed an East-West divide within the EU over how to slash carbon pollution across the 27-nation bloc by 2020. At an informal meeting outside Paris, the ministers agreed to help the European Union’s poorer members, mostly in central and eastern Europe, hit the target of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent compared with 1990 levels. The European Commission’s action plan for cutting greenhouse gases already includes a mechanism for compensating the eastern European nations that remain hugely dependent on indigenous coal, Russian gas and Soviet-era nuclear plants. The EU’s richest nations have agreed to redistribute 10 percent of the income generated by the auction of post-2012 pollution permits under Europe’s emissions trading system. A group of seven nations that were former Soviet satellites have accepted the principle, but say the funds will not be enough.
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