The prospect of agreeing a new United Nations climate treaty which will impose taxes on companies and people appears “very bleak” as countries led by China seek to preserve different rules for developed and developing nations, the European Union’s lead negotiator said.

Envoys from more than 190 governments who met in Durban, South Africa, last December agreed to discuss replacing by 2020 the Kyoto Protocol, which sets emission cutting targets only for developed states. They planned to sign a legal deal in 2015.

“At the moment it’s very bleak,” the EU’s Artur Runge- Metzger said in Bonn. “The hardliners among the developing countries would want to see a similar firewall also erected in the Durban Platform. Particularly China has been vocal.”

China is concerned developed nations are trying to shirk their current commitments and isn’t trying to create a firewall, Su Wei, the country’s lead envoy, said today in an interview.

Keeping a division between industrialized and developing nations would unpick the Durban Platform, an agreement reached in the South African city after negotiations overran by a record day and a half. The UN talks seek to curtail greenhouse-gas emissions and contain to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) the global warming since industrialization.

The Bonn meeting, concluding tomorrow, is deadlocked over a debate on who will chair talks and what will be on the agenda, Runge-Metzger and Bangladeshi envoy Quamrul Chowdhury said.