Poland has rejected an EU proposal for its coal-fired power stations to be temporarily exempted from buying all their greenhouse gas permits, a move aimed at averting a Polish veto of the bloc`s climate package, a senior Polish official said Wednesday.

`We have received a proposal from the French presidency and we understand this as a first step in negotiations,` Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Secretary of State for European Affairs told AFP.

`The proposed measures open the door to the phenomenon of windfall profits for power companies. Our objective is not to create more profits for energy companies -- our objective is to protect consumers,` he said.

Dowgielewicz was referring to a new EU proposal that Poland`s coal-fired power stations would be temporarily exempted from buying all their greenhouse gas permits.

`The idea is to allow at least half of the CO2 emissions allowances to be handed out free, up to 2016, for countries where 60 percent or more of the electricity comes from coal-powered power stations,` an EU negotiator in Brussels wishing to remain anonymous told AFP.

`The moment of truth on the climate package will come on December 6 in Gdansk when President Nicolas Sarkozy meets with Prime Minister (Donald) Tusk and eight other EU leaders,` Dowgielewicz told AFP.

With France currently holding EU`s six-month rotating presidency, Sarkozy is charged with clinching a deal by way of unanimous agreement of the bloc`s 27 members on its proposed package combatting climate change at its December 11-12 summit.

EU nations want to cut CO2 emissions responsible for climate change by 20 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels.

Relying on CO2 bleaching coal-fired plants for 94 percent of its electricity, Poland has threatened to veto the whole EU environmental package if a compromise on the cost of CO2 emission quotas is not found.

It and other coal-dependent eastern European EU members have opposed the EU`s original proposal to begin full auctioning of CO2 emission quotas for industry in 2013, arguing it would see energy prices skyrocket and economic growth nosedive.

`We want to build an energy-climate package with which poorer EU states can survive,` Tusk told an EU summit in Brussels last month.

Warsaw has raised several alternative proposals, including a guaranteed price corridor for future increases in energy prices, a so-called CO2-specific benchmarking-auctioning system and including gross domestic product in calculations for CO2 emission quota costs.

The CO2-specific benchmarking-auctioning system would reward electricity producers using the `best available` technologies -- emitting the least amount of carbon dioxide -- with free emission quotas.

`We`ve made good progress on the issue of finding a solution for limits on price volatility for CO2 emission quotas,` Dowgielewicz told AFP Wednesday, commenting the state of climate package talks.