EU Outlook for Paris Climate Deal Positive One Day Before Talks End

Elina Bardram, the head of the European Commission's delegation to the COP21 Paris Climate Change Conference, said that The fact that participating countries had to submit their own Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), before COP21 even opened, was the greatest indication of participants' determination to reach a deal.

PARIS (Sputnik) — The outlook for the Paris climate deal is positive, although lots of work still has to be done in the last hours of negotiations, Elina Bardram, the head of the European Commission's delegation to the COP21 Paris Climate Change Conference, said Thursday.

"The text has extremes but it also has alternatives for a very solid and ambitious outcome. So what we will be doing in the coming days at the ministerial level is to engage in order to find a way to find the compromises for a balanced, but ambitious package," Bardram said.

The fact that participating countries had to submit their own Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), before COP21 even opened, in which they outlined feasible greenhouse gas emissions reductions, was the greatest indication of participants' determination to reach a deal, according to Bardram. "We are moving from the action by few, to action by all. And we see great hope in it," she said.

While the deal's text is still overly complicated, with a lot of work to be done, the negotiations confirmed the participants' political determination that Bardram believes will result in a "very solid and ground breaking agreement" as the conference concludes.

The climate summit in Paris, running between November 30 and December 11, is a meeting of the Kyoto Protocol parties. Attended by over 130 world leaders and top diplomats, the summit is set to achieve a legally binding emissions reduction agreement.