Coal-dependent Poland said it would lead the call for all nations to deepen greenhouse emissions cuts when it hosts U.N. climate talks in Warsaw next month, in a surprise reversal of its previous stance.

Poland has long battled against wider EU proposals to shift to a low-carbon economy. It relies on carbon-intensive coal to fuel around 90% of its power generation.

But at a meeting of EU environment ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, it said it would lead the U.N. climate talks with a mandate to persuade all nations to promise more ambitious action.

"As the future president of the (U.N.) Conference of the Parties, I am very happy we have a mandate," Polish Environment Minister Marcin Korolec told reporters.

In previous years, Polish opposition to proposed EU-wide climate promises has undermined the bloc's negotiating position at U.N. talks. Now that Poland is hosting the talks, the absence of an EU negotiating mandate would be embarrassing.

Polish officials said that a shift in emphasis away from the European Union alone deepening cuts to a push for all nations to make bigger promises, in documents agreed on Monday, had helped to overcome Polish reservations.

Monday's text, agreed by the 28 EU nations, underlines "that enhancing pre-2020 mitigation ambition by all parties will contribute to an ambitious 2015 international agreement." Mitigation ambition is diplomatic language for greenhouse emissions cuts.

The U.N. talks in Warsaw next month will be an interim step ahead of a summit in Paris in 2015, which is meant to reach agreement on a new global deal on climate change that brings in all the big emitters including China, India and the United States.

Mankind To Blame

The Luxembourg meeting of EU environment ministers is an early test of the political response to the latest U.N. report on climate change, which found mankind is almost certainly to blame for global warming but that the pace of climate change had slowed.

Historically, Europe has sought to lead with ambitious climate policy, but economic crisis has thrown the emphasis on short-term costs rather than the longer-term benefits of a shift to a lower carbon economy.

The European Union has already almost met its 2020 target of cutting greenhouse gases by 20% from 1990 levels as economic recession and development of renewable power has lowered emissions. It is working on an EU deal for 2030 emissions cuts, but discussion is expected to be fraught.

Apart from wanting to collect more pledges on greenhouse gas cuts, the talks in Warsaw will also seek more hard cash to help poorer countries deal with the impact of climate change.

The funding gap dates back to a U.N. summit in Copenhagen in 2009, when leaders agreed on cash provisions to the end of 2012 and set a separate goal of $100 billion in annual aid by 2020 to help the poor to slow global warming.

But no one spelled out what would happen from 2013 to 2019.

Some EU nations, such as Britain, Denmark, France and Germany, have already made financial pledges stretching beyond 2012.

A draft copy of a document prepared for Tuesday's meeting of EU finance ministers was vague about where the rest of the money would come from.