Strasbourg, France - Nicolas Sarkozy on Tuesday defended the European Union's watered-down deal on climate change, saying the compromises that have been agreed by leaders will avoid imposing unbearable sacrifices on its citizens.

"We didn't want to impose constrictions which no country in the world could have survived socially," said the French president in his final address to the European Parliament at the helm of the bloc's rotating presidency.

Sarkozy was speaking in Strasbourg one day before European lawmakers are due to endorse a set of rules aimed at slashing the bloc's emissions of the gases which cause global warming.

The parliament's main political groups have already announced that they will be supporting the deal, ensuring its safe passage in Strasbourg.

The package of legally-binding measures designed to reduce emissions by 20 per cent below their 1990s levels by 2020 was approved by EU heads of state and government at a summit in Brussels last week.

But a final deal was only reached after Sarkozy agreed to grant a series of concessions to industry in Germany and Italy and to the bloc's poorer eastern nations, prompting fierce criticism from environmentalists.

"What I tried to do was to get people on board on climate change, but not at the expense of a social policy which would lead to troubles and difficulties," Sarkozy told lawmakers.

"I never wanted to put them in a situation where (governments) would have to choose between protecting the environment and (economic) growth," he said.

While drawing praise from conservatives, socialists and liberals alike, Sarkozy was the target of fierce criticisms from Green leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who accused him of "trying to have it both ways" on climate.

The French president also offered an overall account of his six- month presidency of the EU, which he said had been forced to follow "the rhythm of international events," among them the Russia-Georgia conflict in August and the financial meltdown in September.

And he also defended his widely-criticized Union for the Mediterranean, a French project designed to strengthen the bloc's political and economic role in the Middle East, noting it was the first time that Israelis and Arabs had both agreed to take up posts in an institution's executive. (dpa)