BRUSSELS: Europe could pay poor countries up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year by 2020 to persuade them to help battle climate change, the European Union's executive arm said yesterday.

Developing countries say industrialized nations should shoulder most of the cost of tackling a problem they caused in the first place, creating a big stumbling block in negotiations ahead of a global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December.

Africa has warned it will veto any deal that is not generous enough, and the 27-country European Union is trying to calculate a fair payment to break the deadlock.