Greenpeace climate activists were arrested after they scaled the façade of the European Council building in Brussels on Thursday (December 12), to unfurl a giant banner calling for greater climate action.
EU national leaders - minus Britain's Boris Johnson - will meet in Brussels later in the afternoon and push to agree to put their bloc on net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, luring the reluctant eastern member states with extra money to transform their economies.
With floods, fires and droughts wrecking lives around the world, Greenpeace activists climbed the EU Council building where the leaders were to meet, and installed a banner reading "Climate Emergency," firing off red flares and blaring fire alarm sirens.
Some were detained by police, who had to get the harnessed activists using a crane.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were threatening on Thursday to wreck the EU's neutrality goal, just a day after the bloc's executive trumpeted it as Europe's "man on the moon" moment.
The eastern countries want more money to fund a transition to a future of lower emissions, including a role for nuclear power which emits no carbon but which Germany and others aim to phase out.
Autor: gf / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, Reuters