It is almost as though the European Union is trying to provoke. Not only will two of its top officials today warn President Bush that he now has the last chance for a compromise on trade talks for the next three or four years; they will also present him with a plan to combat climate change that goes far beyond the Kyoto emissions cuts rejected by Mr Bush as “fatally flawed”.

In talks in the Oval Office, José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, will urge Mr Bush to accept a 30 per cent cut in emissions from the baseline of 1990, a target that the EU is proposing for all developed nations. This is far above the 7 per cent cut by 2012 that would have been imposed on America by the Kyoto agreement, and even EU officials admit that it is ambitious. But the EU gives a number of reasons why the plan may at least get a hearing. First, Mr Bush — largely in response to changing US opinion — now accepts that global warming is a cause for concern. Secondly, he admitted last year that the US was “addicted to oil” and should move beyond a petroleum-based economy — the issue of energy security is of concern to both Democrats and Republicans. And thirdly, he will see that the EU proposal supports a key US demand in all negotiations about emissions cuts: that China be included, and not excused from binding goals (as it was in Kyoto) on the grounds that it is still a “developing” nation.

Mr Bush has committed the US to finding new technologies to combat climate change, and the EU will remind him that other countries are already capitalising on the green consumer market. He knows the inroads that Toyota hybrid cars are making into the domestic car market. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Washington will signal any shift in policy today, before the report next month by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Still less is the chance of a breakthrough on the stalemated Doha round of trade liberalisation talks. Mr Barroso, accompanied by Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner, will ask Washington to cut its farm subsidies from $23 billion a year to $15 billion. But unless the EU itself is willing to move farther than its offer, made when talks were suspended in July, to cut farm import tariffs by an average of about 50 per cent, the US will find little incentive for a deal — at least not unless Brazil, India and other developing economies do more to open their markets.

The Europeans are clutching at bizarre hopes that the new Democratic-controlled Congress will want a quick agreement before the President’s fast-track authority runs out in July, after which any deal could unravel as Congress scrutinises each item in the package. Mr Mandelson is also trying to talk up the chances of agreement by insisting that the numbers are not far apart, while setting a deadline of about three months before he says the entire Doha round must be put on ice until at least a year into the next US president’s term.

Such bluster is unlikely to move either Mr Bush or Congress, which is likely to be more, not less, protectionist than its Republican-controlled predecessor. Mr Mandelson is right in insisting that the impasse can be resolved only at the highest level. But it also remains tantalisingly unclear precisely what more the EU and Mr Mandelson will offer on trade liberalisation. The victims of protectionism are the world’s most vulnerable countries. But it is obvious that in this crime Europe is far more guilty than the US.