Brussels  - The French presidency of the European Union on Thursday stuck to its guns on a series of laws aimed at fighting climate change, setting out a "final compromise" barely changed from earlier proposals criticized by environmentalists.

Critics said that the compromise offered so many concessions on so many points that it would be hard to work out all the implications of a deal.

"The task is to think about our children and leave them a planet which is worthy of life," Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme said.

The French offer bows to the EU's most climate-conscious member states on two key issues: The extent to which heavy industries will have to bid for permits to emit carbon dioxide (CO2, the gas most linked with global warming), and the amount of support the EU will give to innovative power stations that pump their CO2 underground.

But it also throws a sop to member states such as Poland that use large amounts of fossil fuels, extending a promise of free permits to emit CO2 to any country which relied on "a single fossil fuel" for more than 30 per cent of its energy.

Those concessions followed a round of talks that diplomats said were remarkably positive, given the heated attacks that some member states had delivered on the package ahead of the summit.

Before the talks, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had said that it would be "absurd" to talk about climate change in a time of financial crisis, "as if someone suffering from pneumonia were to think about having a perm."

But after a discussion with colleagues he proclaimed that "we are heading towards a deal. Italy is obtaining everything it requested."

Diplomats close to the talks confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the atmosphere of the talks had been unexpectedly positive, with some sources predicting a deal as early as Friday afternoon.

But the final French proposal, which followed the first-round talks, risks antagonizing some member states who had pushed for more concrete compromises.

It rejects a German call to name the industries that will have to be protected from competition from countries that have less strict climate-change rules before a world summit on climate change in Copenhagen in December 2009.

It also turns a cold shoulder to a Polish demand that power stations that have not yet been built in the country should be given free permits to emit CO2 because the country relies heavily on coal - insisting that only plants that have already been built should qualify for such treatment.

And it insists on a system of giving poor member states an extra share of emissions permits to support expensive upgrades, which Britain has criticized as being inappropriate in a package that is meant to protect the environment, not national economies.

But it keeps the main components of earlier proposals, granting generous concessions to EU industries that fear the package will render them uncompetitive, and allowing EU member states to gain credit from sponsoring emissions-reduction projects in developing countries - diminishing the cuts they have to make at home.

Environmental group WWF expressed dismay at the earlier proposal, saying that it was "abysmal" and would reduce emissions "significantly less than the proclaimed
20-per-cent target by 2020."

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was one of many leaders to reject that claim, arguing that every member state had backed the goal of a 20-per-cent cut by 2020, rising to 30 per cent in the event of a deal in Copenhagen. (dpa)