By Gabriela Baczynska
GDANSK, Poland (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy flies to Poland on Saturday to try to unblock Warsaw's opposition to new European climate goals, seeking a compromise likely to center on coal concessions.
Holder of the rotating EU presidency, Sarkozy meets Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic states to try and thrash out a deal ahead of a December 11-12 EU summit.
"If we do not manage to reach an agreement at the lunch, then the night of the 11th to the 12th will be very long," an official in Sarkozy's office told reporters on Friday.
Sarkozy arrives to meets Tusk at 1 p.m. (1200 GMT) in a one-to-one meeting for 30 minutes before joining the other leaders and giving a news conference.
Poland has threatened to veto an EU climate and energy package which would slash the bloc's greenhouse gases by a fifth and double the production of energy from renewable sources like the wind and sun by 2020.
Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki on Friday rejected a compromise plan made by France to give the coal-dependent country more time to meet the new climate caps.
"This is one step in the right direction, but not enough," he told Reuters on the sidelines of December 1-12 U.N. climate talks, which Poland is hosting in the western city of Poznan.
"This is not enough time," he said of the French proposals. Poland gets more than 90 percent of its electricity from high-carbon coal.
Under the French plan, West European plants would have to buy permits to emit every tonne of carbon dioxide they produce from burning fossil fuels from 2013, and their counterparts in Eastern Europe the same from 2016.
"It's hard to say what will be the outcome of the European summit," Nowicki said, adding Poland would continue to negotiate for a fairer deal for Eastern Europe even if that meant no deal at the summit.
Poland argues that its energy system needs until 2020 to curb carbon emissions, for example using more efficient boilers, carbon-scrubbing equipment and possibly a first nuclear plant.
While seeking EU concessions, Nowicki as host of the U.N. talks is trying to push delegations from 187 nations toward stiffer targets to fight warming under a new pact due to be agreed at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.
-- Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Paris