The EU are hoping that the UN climate summit in Peru today will lead to agreement on some legally binding targets.
The conference, named the Lima conference, is intended to deliver the first draft of an accord to cut carbon emissions and prevent climate change. This is then expected to be signed in December next year at another UN conference held in Paris.
A senior EU official in Brussels said that the aim was to make emissions cuts mandatory rather than optional. They described these targets as "key asks" and said "legally binding mitigation targets are definitely something that the EU is pushing for".
The current agreement prototype gives more flexibility to participants and has a broad range of views of what constitutes legal force.
The US have different views and have commented that they would like to put an option on the table at Lima that would contain some legally binding elements, but also enables countries to decide the scale and pace of their emissions reductions. This was an idea initially raised by New Zealand.
The US special envoy on climate change, Todd Stern, seemed to feel the best option would to be to strike a balance between all parties and create a "hybrid approach" to legal enforcement.
