The Europeans are not expecting a major breakthrough on the issue at the summit in Slovenia, where it is likely to be a main bone of contention, with the two sides expected merely to restate their positions.

"On climate change, the positions are split," Dimitrij Rupel, foreign minister of current EU president Slovenia, put it bluntly last week.

It's a "difficult subject" and the European and US positions "are still pretty far apart," echoed European Commission vice-president Guenther Verheugen.

The EU nations have set themselves an ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, with an emphasis on renewable energy sources.

However Bush is unwilling to set binding targets in the US without undertakings from emerging economies such as China and India.

US lawmakers blocked a sweeping climate change bill Friday, after Republican warnings of high energy costs dashed Democrats' hopes for pollution caps under Bush's administration.

It's not just Bush's stance which causes some EU leaders to feel this week's summit will not achieve very much, on climate change, or anything else which would require future implementation.

It's "a lame duck administration," is how one EU official put it. "It is an outgoing administration that is no longer very popular in the United States itself so there is not going to be a lot in terms of real decisions that will be acted upon later," he added.

Many Europeans harbour hopes that whoever succeeds Bush -- Democrat candidate Barack Obama or Republican John McCain -- will adopt a more sympathetic position at a Copenhagen international summit in December 2009.

At that meeting leaders will seek a worldwide agreement on CO2 emissions reductions after 2012 when the current Kyoto agreement, which the US never ratified, expires.

"Obama and McCain have made clearly more positive noises on climate change," an EU official said.

It's a sentiment which the US administration does not endorse.

I think that's a misconception frankly," US Special Envoy for EU Affairs C. Boyden Gray told AFP.

"If you read what Obama has said about China's need to be engaged (in a global deal) and that what McCain says is identical to what the president is saying, (then) I don't think that's going to change."

Gray describes EU-US relations as "quite good now and I think getting better," not least through the "very, very successful" Transatlantic Economic Council set up last year.

Bush "is admired and I would even say very well liked by the leaders who know him," he added, while admitting "that's not the public image."

Besides climate change -- and the interlinked issues of rising fuel and food prices -- the Europeans in Slovenia will also be seeking US clarification over travel visa restrictions.

At the moment 12 of the 27 EU member states, mainly from the former Communist bloc, do not enjoy visa-free travel to the United States.

On top of that Washington announced last week that it would ask travellers from western Europe, as a security measure, to provide personal details via an electronic form 72 hours before boarding a plane for the States.

"We will remind the American president of his promise to lift visa requirements," said Verheugen.

Another bone of contention is chickens.

A continuing EU ban on poultry washed in chlorine, in effect a ban on US chicken imports, rankles with Washington.

"There's no scientific evidence of any health problems," said US envoy Gray, adding that "chlorine of course is used across Europe for other applications, fruits and vegetables, even water."

Brussels has proposed a conditional lifting of the ban but last week veterinary experts from the EU member states said it should remain in place.

"It's a philosophical problem," said an EU official, who wished not to be named.

For the United States it is still very much a trade issue, and Washington could well bring it to the attention of the World Trade Organisation.

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