Erjavec noted that these two issues remained open on the level of the EU. Erjavec believes that EU committing to a 30% decrease in emissions would be an encouragement to other partners to set similarly concrete and ambitious goals.
Regarding aid to developing countries, Slovenia would contribute between 0.3% and 0.4% of its GDP after 2012, if a universal key taking into account emissions as well as the development of the countries would be used, according to Erjavec.
In his opinion, funds for this should come from the public finance, since not all the burden can be put on the business, especially considering the economic crisis.
Erjavec noted that the crisis was double edged. While a fall in production will contribute to lower emissions, it also impacts the funds available for improvements.
Turning to the main obstacles on the path to an ambitious global agreement, Erjavec pointed to the US, whose congress will not adopt climate change legislation by the end of the year, meaning that the country's delegation will not have a mandate for confirming concrete commitments in Copenhagen.
Erjavec is still optimistic about the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference. He compared the conference to Slovenia's playoff game with Russia in qualifications for the 2010 World Cup in football, in which Slovenia won despite expectations to the contrary.
A failure of the Copenhagen talks would be a "very bad signal for the world public", because people might start to believe that the issue of climate change is not that serious.
It is thus extremely important "that we move on from documents to concrete measures", Erjavec said, noting that a lot of efforts have been invested in the two-year talks on the next climate agreement.
Erjavec however said that there was a plan B, under which Copenhagen would only be the first stage towards a final agreement to be reached in the middle of 2010.
According to Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, the EU could cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 14% by 2010 only with the measures envisaged in the climate-energy package the EU adopted late last year.
The Copenhagen Climate Conference, which will take place between 7 and 18 December, is to come up with a new climate document that is to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
