European environment ministers taking part at an informal meeting in Seville said keeping the proposal on the table would inject momentum into the deflated international climate talks after the failure of December's Copenhagen summit.

"We definitely think we should maintain the 30 percent offer. We think it is very, very important. It has always been a conditional offer but it is a very important signal that it is maintained," British Energy and Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband told reporters.

The European Union had agreed ahead of the climate talks in Denmark to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent over the next decade from 1990 levels and to deepen those cuts to 30 percent if other nations followed suit.

But the offer failed to inspire other nations to raise their targets for emissions cuts as had been hoped.

The United States and Canada have both proposed reducing their carbon emissions by just 3.0 percent over 1990 levels while Australia plans a 13 percent cut.

The climate summit ended with a deal that set the aim of limiting warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but did not set legally-binding targets to reduce the emissions of gases that scientists say are heating up the world's atmosphere to dangerous levels.

The roughly 50 nations which signed on to the accord have until the end of the month to declare their official carbon reduction commitments to the United Nations.

Spanish climate change secretary of state Teresa Ribera, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the bloc was not looking for other developed nations to table the same emissions cuts figures but wanted to see a "comparable effort" on their part.

Italy and Poland oppose raising the bloc's proposed emissions cuts due to concerns that this will put their companies at a competitive disadvantage.

But France, like Britain, backs keeping the possibility of deepening the proposed cuts on the table.

"It is not a question of going to 30 percent blindly. Nobody would accept that. We will go to 30 percent depending on the commitments that are published (by other developed nations)," said French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo.

Belgian Climate Minister Paul Magnette said raising the EU's target to 30 percent could give European firms a "first mover advantage" in the change to a green economy which could lead their peers in India, China and the United States to follow their example.

"By staying with our 20 percent target we might take the risk of losing the opportunity for major industrial change," he said.

British climate campaign group Sandbag said the bloc could easily go further since its emissions levels in 2008 were already 10.7 percent below 1990 levels, according to the latest figures from the European Environment Agency, the EU body which advises on the environment.

Data for 2009 is expected to show a further reduction because of the recession.

"Now is not the time to sit back and wait, Europe must lead by example. A 30 percent cut by 2020 is easier to achieve than ever," Sandbag said in a statement.

The so-called Copenhagen accord was brokered by the four biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the developing world -- Brazil, China, India and South Africa -- and the United States, the biggest emitter in the developed world.

Britain and several other EU nations hope the "Copenhagen Accord" can still be transformed into a legally-binding climate change deal at a fresh summit in Mexico at the end of the year.

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