According to the Bali Road Map , a framework for climate change mitigation beyond was to be agreed there.
On Friday 18 December, the final day of the conference, international media reported that the climate talks were "in disarray". It was "taken note of", but not "adopted", in a debate of all the participating countries the next day, and it was not passed unanimously. The document is not legally binding and does not contain any legally binding commitments for reducing CO 2 emissions. The conference was preceded by the Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions scientific conference, which took place in March and was also held at the Bella Center.
On 28 January , the European Commission released a position paper, "Towards a comprehensive climate agreement in Copenhagen. Leading by example, the European Union had committed to implementing binding legislation, even without a satisfactory deal in Copenhagen. This new stage of the system aims at further reducing greenhouse gases emitted in Europe in a binding way and at showing the commitments the EU had already done before the Copenhagen meeting.
To avoid carbon leakage βrelocation of companies in other regions not complying with similar legislationβthe EU Commission will foresee that sectors exposed to international competition, should be granted some free allocations of CO 2 emissions provided that they are at least at the same level of a benchmark. Other sectors should buy such credits on an international market. Energy intensive industries in Europe have advocated for this benchmark system in order to keep funds in investment capacities for low carbon products rather than for speculations.
To comply with such commitments for a low-carbon economy , this requires competitiveness and innovations. A draft negotiating text [ 14 ] [ 15 ] for finalisation at Copenhagen was publicly released. It was discussed at a series of meetings before Copenhagen.
