BRUSSELS, Nov 25 (IPS) - Senior European Union figures are portraying themselves as champions of sound ecological policies ahead of the international climate change negotiations that begin in Poznan, Poland Dec. 1. Stavros Dimas, Europe's environment commissioner, this week described a series of measures being considered by the bloc's 27 governments as "easily the most far-reaching legislative package on fighting climate change anywhere in the world."

Green activists who have assessed the small print of these measures are less impressed, and believe that the EU's rhetoric is not being supported by solid action.

One of the main reasons why the Union cannot genuinely claim to be displaying leadership, they say, is that it has so far been unwilling to undertake drastic cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide, the main gas triggering climate change, within its own borders.

In 2007, the EU's governments committed themselves to a minimum 20 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.

Yet the latest version of proposals on their table suggest that about 65 percent of those cuts would not actually take place at home. Rather they would be 'offset' by financing 'clean development' in other parts of the world.