Statement by President Barroso at the EU-Russia Summit on Climate Change

Speaking at the press conference following the EU-Russia Summit, President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso stated that "With the Copenhagen conference starting in just over 2 weeks, we have made very important progress today and I very much welcome the signal from President Medvedev today of their proposed emissions reduction target of 20 to 25%.

I have instructed officials to work very closely with their Russian counterparts on all the details, because we fully agreed in our discussion this morning that this is a critical negotiation and we must succeed in Copenhagen. Both the European Union and Russia have responsibilities to lead on climate change, and we need all players to do all they can to remain within the 2 degrees target. We can negotiate between ourselves on the numbers, but we can't negotiate with physics. Science must be our guiding light. I am confident that we can still achieve a meaningful result in Copenhagen."

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