Less than two weeks before a new round of United Nations climate change talks in Morocco, Environment Commissioner Margaret Wallstrom had hoped the policy proposals would show Europe's determination to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

But the EU executive failed to complete discussion of the package, which included the world's first carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions trading scheme and a document aimed at legally binding the bloc to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Wallstrom's spokeswoman said the Commission simply ran out of time and would discuss the issue again next Wednesday.

"There was not time to finish discussions on emissions trading, the main outstanding discussion point in the package," Pia Ahrenkilde-Hansen told Reuters.

But environmentalists said the package had been sabotaged by Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen, defending the interests of industries that will be forced to cut polluting emissions.

"In postponing the decision, the Commission is quite simply undermining the credibility of the whole EU on climate change," Greenpeace campaigner Michel Raquet said.

The European Union assumed the role of defender of the Kyoto pact after the United States pulled out of it in March.

Brussels hopes the two-week U.N. session in Marrakesh will spell out the fine print of the deal allowing countries to ratify it by next year.

The U.N. treaty, which has yet to come into force, requires industrialised countries to reduce emissions of gases believed to cause global warming to an average of five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.