Jose Manuel Barroso tried one more time on Thursday morning. The president of the European Commission spoke to German public TV station ZDF about the importance of agreeing on "binding goals" that should feature in the final communiqué to be issued at the G-8 summit.

The G-8 leaders will be discussing climate protection on Thursday afternoon, and the European Union (EU) countries are pushing for the United States to show more flexibility. On Wednesday, United States President George W. Bush agreed in principal to a reduction of CO2 emissions following his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He also agreed to participate in negotiations on a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

But it is considered unlikely that the United States will cross their own "red line" and tolerate concrete climate protection goals in the final communiqué. Angela Merkel, who holds the rotating G-8 presidency this year, would like to commit the industrialized countries to reducing their CO2 emissions to half the 1990 level by 2050, arguing that this is the only way to keep global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Given the persistent US resistance, the German G-8 delegation is searching for a solution that will allow both Bush and Merkel to not lose face while still having a successful achievement to show in the end. One option being discussed what could best be described as a "footnote trick."

In this scenario, the final communiqué would contain no specific figures on climate protection, but there would be an explicit reference to the most recent climate report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization established by the United Nations (UN) in 1988 to assess the risks involved in human-caused climate change. The report contains precisely the figures that Merkel would have liked to include in the communiqué. So referencing it would amount to an indirect inclusion of concrete climate protection goals. The final communiqué would also feature a statement to the effect that climate change is caused by humans and can therefore also be reversed by humans -- a scientific insight that Bush only started recognizing recently.

Can the EU and the United States agree?

Such a statement would allow Merkel to smooth the way for Bush while at the same time being able pride herself on having moved the United States a bit closer to the EU position. G-8 delegates already consider it a success that Bush has agreed to get involved in the creation of a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. The United States rejected the first Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

At the same time, delegates emphasized that the inclusion of precise figures in the final communiqué remains possible. The European goverrnment leaders -- Blair, Merkel, Sarkozy, Prodi and Barroso -- will once more demand the inclusion of such figures at the working session on climate change on Thursday afternoon. The figures first disappeared from the draft communiqué, which the sherpas of the government leaders are constantly reworking, only to reappear again later. The situation is still in flux, delegation sources say.

Following a bilateral meeting with Bush this morning, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he is expecting a voluntary commitment to a "substantial reduction" in greenhouse gases to feature in the summit communiqué. The figure doesn't have to be exactly 50 percent, but it should be something on that order of magnitude, Blair said.

But it is already more than clear the Europeans would also be satisfied with a document that does not feature concrete goals. On Wednesday, Merkel formulated the motto that the summit will have been a success if solutions are closer within reach by the end of it than they were at the beginning -- a very vague definition that already excludes the possibility of failure in advance.