European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, listens as Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt speaks at a special EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. (Virginia Mayo/Associated Press)

The European Union's member states said Friday they have agreed to pay "their fair share" into a global fund to aid developing countries in curbing their emissions and adapting to climate change, but didn't specify how much.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had earlier said that as much as $80 billion annually in public funds from around the world should go to aid developing countries, about half the $160 billion from all sources that the United Nations wants developing countries to receive.

The UN hopes the fund would get developing countries to sign on to a new climate change agreement that would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

EU leaders meeting for a second day of a two-day summit in Brussels did not say how much Europe itself would contribute to the fund, saying only in a published document that they would pay "their fair share."

The EU leaders were considering a proposal to make any aid deal more palatable to nine eastern EU members hit hard by the global economic crisis, each of whom demanded concessions.

As a result, the EU said money paid into the fund should be based on both "responsibility for global emissions and the ability to pay, with a considerable weight on emission levels."

Copenhagen agreement in doubt

The UN is pushing for the international community to make progress on a new global pact on greenhouse gas emissions targets during a December conference in Copenhagen, in an effort to curb the impact of global warming.

The world's wealthy nations are seeking to control emissions from all countries with a new climate pact, but need to offer some incentive for developing countries to join the agreement.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol only required 37 industrialized nations to cut emissions, and the lack of participation of the United States and China — the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world — as well as countries in the developing world helped to undermine its effectiveness.

But delays in the introduction of emission reduction regulations around the world have many involved in the talks doubtful a replacement to Kyoto will be reached in Copenhagen.

Earlier this week both Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and Janos Pasztor, director of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Change Support Team, said they had doubts the Copenhagen summit would produce an agreement. Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice also expressed those same sentiments earlier this month.

Emission reduction targets a sticking point

The two most contentious issues for the international community are the aid to developing countries and getting industrialized countries to come up with "ambitious" emission reduction targets.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said developed nations would have to cut emissions to between 25 and 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst effects of climate change.

Canada's federal government has pledged to lower greenhouse gases 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020.

The New Democratic Party introduced a private member's bill earlier this year that called for Canada to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 25 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020, but a third reading of that bill has been delayed while a House of Commons environment committee continues to study it.

With files from The Associated Press