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European leaders have reached a compromise deal on how to cut carbon emissions, diplomats said, on the second day of a heads of state summit in Brussels.
The plan lays out the ways in which the EU's 27 members will cut carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 and is intended to set an example for world efforts to tackle climate change.
It includes various burden-sharing measures meant to ensure that the cost of curbing pollution will not impede economic growth. The cost of the plan had caused uproar among many poor eastern European countries, many heavily reliant on coal for power, as the continent grapples with economic downturn.
As EU leaders set the seal on plans to cut emissions, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, expressed hope that a deal in Brussels could give impetus to UN climate change talks in Poznan, Poland, which are laying the groundwork for a global climate deal in 2009.
"I am cautiously optimistic that we will manage to have a ...