Brussels - There will be no binding deal at this year's UN climate summit in Durban, Europe's Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Wednesday.
Speaking to journalists after attending a high-level climate change meeting in Brussels, Hedegaard said: "The good news is that there is a general recognition of the necessity of a legally binding agreement.
"The bad news is no legally binding agreement deal will be done in Durban."
The commissioner spoke following a two-day meeting of the so-called Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF), a gathering of the world's 17 largest economies aimed at advancing efforts to cut greenhouse emissions and increase the supply of clean energy.
The European Union "is the region pushing for a legally binding deal, but the others are not pushing as much as the EU," Hedegaard said.
"We must get as much as we can."
The last UN climate summit took place in the Mexican resort city of Cancun in December. The Durban talks are scheduled for late November or early December.
But the Cancun agreements focused mainly on the easiest steps to be taken, after an effort 12 months earlier in Copenhagen to achieve a much more wide-ranging accord saw the UN climate process almost collapse.