European Commission plans to create a new department for energy and climate change have been attacked by a group of influential MEPs.

"We are astonished and not a little alarmed at the suggestion that a new Commission directorate-general for climate change might be established," states a letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, signed by all the MEPs who negotiated for the Parliament on the EU's climate and energy package.

One of the options envisaged by the Commission is to bring climate change and energy together in a new directorate-general.

This would mean splitting energy from the current transport and energy department, and transferring some staff from the environment department - which currently leads climate change policy - to the new department.

The MEPs say that a single department responsible for both energy and climate risks interference from "short-term economic interest" in establishing effective and sustainable climate policy. The need to take account of policies ranging from agriculture to foreign affairs would not be adequately addressed, they say.

Luxembourgeois Green MEP Claude Turmes went further than his co-signatories. He told European Voice that the result would be to move climate policy away from "pro-environment people" in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. He fears that laws drafted by a climate and energy department would go to industry ministers and the Parliament's industry committee, rather than to their environment counterparts, as happens now.