The United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Tianjin, China, between 4 and 9 October 2010, has shown that a lot of work still remains to be achieved before the celebration of the Climate Conference in Cancún. The Tianjin meeting has, nonetheless, paved the way for the adoption of a balanced package of decisions in the forthcoming Climate Conference in Cancún, which will takes forward global action to combat climate change.

The shape and content of this climate package to be adopted in Cancún has started to become clearer during the celebration of the UN Climate Conference in Tianjin, China, where some advances have been made towards drafting decisions for Cancún addressing a number of issues of priority concern to developing countries, such as climate finance, technology cooperation, reducing tropical deforestation and adaptation to climate change.

However, as highlighted by European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, the progress achieved in Tianjin has been very patchy and much too slow. This is particularly the case for the insufficient progress in translating key elements of the Copenhagen Accord into UN texts. The lack of progress on these issues and signs of backtracking on the Copenhagen Accord by certain parties, gives us cause for concern about the balance of the Cancún package.

It seems that the gap between the texts on the table at the end of the Tianjin session and the decisions to be reached in Cancún is still quite big and a lot of work will be needed over the coming weeks to bridge this gap.

Nonetheless the European Union is still confident that Cancún can succeed and will make all efforts through intensive bilateral and multilateral contacts with all partners, including host country Mexico, to help ensure that Cancún achieves the strong outcome that is needed to keep the international fight against climate change on track.

For the European Union it is vital that the package of decisions to be taken in Cancún both captures the progress made in the international climate negotiations so far and establishes a solid basis for reaching an ambitious and legally binding global climate agreement as soon as possible.

United Nations-led negotiations to prepare a global climate change agreement for the post-2012 era were launched at the end of 2007. The negotiating session which took place in Tianjin, China from 4 to 9 October was the last formal session before the UN climate conference to be held in Cancun Mexico, between November and December.