Compromise on EU climate package "close": Polish PM

Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday an agreement was "close" on the European Union's planned climate package which his coal-dependent country had threatened to veto.

"I think that we are close to a version acceptable for Poland... a version that will allow us to avoid a veto," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters, without elaborating.

Poland will host crunch talks on the bloc's planned climate package between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and prime ministers from EU newcomers, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Romania in Gdansk on Saturday.

France, which currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency, will be aiming to get unanimous agreement of the bloc's 27 members on the proposed package combatting climate change at its December 11-12 summit in Brussels.

Poland and other EU newcomers have opposed the EU's original proposal to begin full auctioning of CO2 emission quotas for industry in 2013, arguing it would see energy prices skyrocket and growth in their emerging economies nosedive.

Relying on CO2-belching coal-fired plants for 94 percent of its electricity, Poland has threatened to veto the whole EU environmental package if a compromise on the cost of CO2 emission quotas is not found.

The planned EU package sets industrial targets of giving renewables a 20-percent stake in the electricity market, reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent and increasing energy efficiency by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.

The meeting in Gdansk comes as negotiators from around the globe meet at UN climate talks in Poznan, western Poland, for a summit aimed at paving the way to clinching a deal to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming at the UN's next climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009.