For your coal plants and ours

By J.C. | WARSAW

"FOR your freedom and ours" was a motto used by Polish rebels who fought in various uprisings against the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires between 1830 and 1849, both in Poland and in Hungary and Italy. Their intent was to build a coalition of nationalist independence movements from various ethnicities. The current government in Warsaw is engaged in a similar coalition-building effort, this time in an attempt to block plans to introduce tough new carbon emissions targets during this week's EU summit. A Warsaw-led group of central European countries, poorer than western Europe and many still heavily reliant on coal, wants either less ambitious emissions reduction targets, or for the wealthier half of the continent to foot more of the bill. If not, Ewa Kopacz, the new Polish prime minister, is threatening to veto the talks. “If these conditions are not fulfilled, even though this will be my first summit, I will have to act fairly radically,” Ms Kopacz told reporters in Warsaw last weekend.

The draft proposal EU leaders took up Thursday calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. Renewables are to account for 27% of the energy mix by then, and overall energy use is to be cut by 30%. That idea finds little traction in central Europe, where western concern over global warming is generally given short shrift compared to boosting growth and catching up to the west. “In Poland, coal has strategic meaning,” Ms Kopacz said in her maiden speech to parliament. Coal-fired power plants like the one at Belchatow, Europe's largest [pictured above] produce almost 90% of Poland's electricity. Switching to natural gas, while cleaner, would increases Poland's reliance on Russia, whose piplines supply most of Europe's gas.

As Ms Kopacz gears up for local elections next month and parliamentary elections next year, she is acutely aware of the political dangers of a steep increase in power price, which Poles fear could happen in the event of an ambitious emissions reduction plan. Rafal Trzaskowski, the deputy foreign minister in charge of European affairs, estimates electricity prices could rise by 80% and calls the draft “too ambitious”. The opposition Law and Justice party is already calling for Ms Kopacz to exercise her veto. “It is in Poland's interest that the country's development not be hampered by an increase in energy prices,” its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Wednesday.

Fresh from visits to France and Germany in early October, Ms Kopacz is under growing pressure from Poland's leading EU partners not to scupper a deal. The Poles have stood alone against the rest of the EU in defending their coal habit in the past. This time Warsaw is trying to build a central European coalition to take some of the heat. A September 30 summit that included the four Visegrad Group countries—Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary—as well as Romania and Bulgaria concluded that “the introduction of any legally binding renewable energy and energy efficiency targets at EU or national level is not desirable.”

But there are some signs that regional resolve is shaky. Croatia did not join in the statement. The Czechs are also showing signs of buckling. Lubomir Zaoralek, the Czech foreign minister, said his country was ready to take part in “consensus building” and would agree to the targets as long as energy prices do not increase and Czech competitiveness is unharmed. Hungary says it will oppose energy measures that put "a different burden on the Member States without full consideration of their economic situation," but hints that with enough compensation it would accept a 40% reduction target.

And so it goes. In the end, most of the uprisings backed by rebel Poles in the 19^th century foundered, often because the locals understandably favoured their own interests rather than those of the Poles. Warsaw may find the same the same thing happens to its carbon-emissions coalition in Brussels this week.