Brussels, March 4:

EU leaders will try to breathe new life this week into plans to diversify energy sources and combat climate change at a summit in Brussels amid fears they will only blow “hot air”, officials and experts said. German chancellor Angela Merkel will step on to the centre stage of EU politics at the Thursday and Friday meeting when she hosts the 27-nation bloc’s leaders for the first time under Germany’s six-month presidency.

Officials said that energy policy would be in the focus after climbing high on the EU political agenda over the last year on concerns about the reliability of Russia as a supplier and the need to find less polluting sources. Despite the growing importance attached to energy, the EU has struggled to hammer out a common approach, with member countries often putting national interests first, much to the frustration of the European Commission.

Preparing the ground for the heads of state and government, EU energy ministers moved closer last month to a unified policy by agreeing cleaner fuel targets while watering down a proposal to force the break-up of the sector into production and distribution operators.

“It’s going to be a climate and energy summit, these are the issues that are uppermost in our mind,” a senior EU official said Friday. “The only really outstanding question is exactly how ambitious we should be,” the official added. Although the ministers agreed that renewable energy sources should account for a minimum 10 per cent of the EU’s overall make-up by 2020, the leaders are to consider making a 20-per cent target binding.

However, some countries are concerned about setting unreachable targets, with one top diplomat having warned that “there’s only a slight difference between high ambitions and recklessness,” according to the official. But if the only haggling is likely to be over how ambitious to be, that is in part because member states have already scrapped the most radical and controversial proposals.