BRUSSELS, (Reuters) – Europe could pay poor  countries up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year by 2020 to  persuade them to help battle climate change, the European  Union’s executive arm said yesterday.

Developing countries say industrialised nations should  shoulder most of the cost of tackling a problem they caused in  the first place, creating a big stumbling block in negotiations  ahead of a global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Africa has warned it will veto any deal that is not generous  enough, and the 27-country European Union is trying to calculate  a fair payment to break the deadlock.

“Now we must break the impasse in the Copenhagen  negotiations,” EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said in  a statement.

“That is why the (European) Commission is putting forward a  balanced blueprint for financing the necessary action,” he said.

The developing world will face costs of around 100 billion  euros a year by 2020 to cut emissions from industry and to help  deal with the droughts, disease and crop failures that climate  change is forecast to exacerbate.

Taxes on global shipping, aviation and industry could help,  leaving a gap of 22-55 billion euros to be filled from the  public purse. The EU could contribute 2-15 billion euros of  that, the Commission said.
But environmentalists said the figure for the EU was too  low.

“The EU is trying to get away with leaving a tip rather than  paying its share of the bill to protect the planet’s climate,”  Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken said.   The Commission had previously indicated the EU might pay  13-24 billion euros, but retracted those numbers after deciding  the United States should carry a heavier financial burden to  compensate for its relatively modest emissions cuts.

The EU also slashed billions of euros off its budget for  paying for emissions cuts in poor countries after deciding local  businesses should finance their own energy-saving measures  because such investments can ultimately pay for themselves.