Brussels  - European Union leaders launched a fresh bid Friday to break their deadlock over who should pay developing countries to fight climate change, on the second day of a summit in Brussels.

The bloc is keen to solve the question so that it can seize the initiative in United Nations negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

But national leaders on Thursday fell out over the question of who should pay how much to help poorer states fight global warming, with the EU torn between conflicting demands from Germany and Eastern European member states.

Germany is fighting a call from the European Commission, the EU's executive, to put a firm number on the amount of aid developing states will need from the developed world over the next three years, at 5-7 billion euros (7.4-10.3 billion dollars) per year.

A compromise proposal drawn up overnight by Sweden, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency, insisted on that figure, but offered Germany an olive branch by saying that a final offer will only be "determined in the light of the outcome of the Copenhagen conference."

Poland and eight other former-Communist states, meanwhile, oppose a call from the commission to make every member state contribute towards the 5-7 billion euros in funding over the next three years.

They argue that they cannot afford to offer tens of millions of euros in aid to developing states in the midst of financial crisis.

Sweden's proposal acknowledged those claims, saying that payment for the funding would only come from "those member states that can."

The Swedish proposal did insist that the EU should share the bill for longer-term funding - around 100 billion euros a year by 2020, according to commission figures - based on a "universal and global" formula, to be agreed in Copenhagen.

That formula should be based on some combination of each country's wealth and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The former-communist states say that that is not fair, because their economies are poorer and more polluting than those of their Western counterparts.

But to win their support, the Swedish proposal said any EU deal should "take into account the ability to pay of less prosperous member states through an internal adjustment mechanism" - EU-speak for offering them a rebate.

Diplomats said that the member states' positions were so far apart that it was not yet clear whether the compromise would be enough to clinch a deal. (dpa)