Laitenberger said the postponement would allow further consultations on the proposals between the EU executive and the 27 member states, and let the EU take into account the outcome of a UN meeting on climate change due in Bali in December.

The proposals were originally due to be published ahead of the Bali conference, where delegates hope to start to shape a global deal for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The EU agreed in March to cut emissions mainly of carbon dioxide blamed for global warming by 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels and 30 percent if the rest of the world joins in.

But the details of how the EU will achieve its goals are still being worked out, and the most difficult point will be how to divide up the overall target among the 27 member states.

The proposals will lay out how the emissions targets should be distributed. That legislation, often referred to as "burden sharing", will then have to be endorsed by national governments.

The draft legislation postponed to January will include changes to the bloc's emissions trading scheme and national targets for another EU goal of having 20 percent of power from renewable sources by 2020.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Reuters last month that dividing emissions targets among EU states will be a battle. "For all member states, this is a question of basic interests," he said.

Countries that take a bigger share of the EU reduction will have to force their power generators and energy-intensive industries to cut back further carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Many of the newcomers in the EU are former communist countries whose economic catch-up ambitions trump their environmental aspirations.

The EU nonetheless sees itself in the vanguard of the battle against climate change and issued a new call for results from the Bali conference, saying it should lay the ground for an accord on a post-2012 climate change framework by 2009.