EU president commits to growth and environment
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5B93T320091210
BONN, Germany (Reuters) - The European Union must boost economic growth and commit to fighting climate change to ensure the survival of its social model and of the planet, the new EU President Herman Van Rompuy said on Thursday.
The former Belgian prime minister, who starts his new role on January 1, set out his plans in a speech to center-right party colleagues in Bonn before going to Brussels for an EU summit.
"The survival of the social model and the planet itself is in our hands," Van Rompuy said in an address in which he spoke in English, Dutch and French.
"We must at least double the poor growth rates of one percent that have been projected for our economies ... to ensure that the social model we are so attached to remains viable and can survive."
Van Rompuy, who has said little about his policy plans in public since his appointment on November 19, said economic growth needed to be "greener and more knowledge-based."
He made clear that climate change would be an important part of his work at of the Council of EU leaders, who have promised to cut harmful carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels.
"The Union is ambitious in setting this objective and generous in the resources it is making available to the poorest countries to ensure that they also become climate friendly," he said. "But other countries must make comparable efforts."
Van Rompuy also said the 27-country bloc must hold out the prospect of EU membership to countries from the former Yugoslavia because it was the only guarantee of durable peace.
He said he would work to ensure the EU, which represents nearly 500 million people, overcomes divisions between the rich and poor, and between large and small countries.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; editing by David Stamp)
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