The ETUC is concerned about political announcements predicting that the Copenhagen Conference in December will not result in a legally binding treaty on climate change. Putting off the signature of a treaty under discussion for months would be a bad political signal for the planet and would seriously burden future generations.
ETUC Confederal Secretary Joël Decaillon commented: "It is essential to maintain the objectives that have been set for the Copenhagen Conference. The absence of an agreement would boil down to wasting an extremely important opportunity, particularly in a context of crisis that imposes another concept of development. The convening of such a conference would not have been as crucial just a decade ago.
Today, it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gases and to limit the global increase in temperatures to 2° at most. The European trade unions also point out that climate change can and must have the ambition of becoming a driver of sustainable growth and of social progress in the fight against poverty and social inequalities."
Link to the video “Towards the Copenhagen Summit - John Monks' contribution”: http://www.etuc.org/a/6677
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) speaks with a single voice on behalf of the common interests of workers, at European level. Founded in 1973, it now represents 82 trade union organisations in 36 European countries, plus 12 industry-based federations