Sweden criticized the Copenhagen climate change summit as a "disaster" and a "great failure" on Tuesday. European Union environment ministers are meeting to discuss how to salvage the process after the summit failed to produce firm goals, including a 20-percent cut in carbon emissions by 2020. Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, who chairs the talks as Sweden holds the EU presidency, expressed the need to learn from the failure and explore alternative ways to work towards combating climate change. The U.N.-led conference concluded after two weeks with an agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, but did not provide a plan for achieving this goal. Despite extensive preparation and international diplomacy, the main issue was the inability of the United States and China to agree on fixed targets. The European Union entered the talks with a united front and a plan to finance emissions cuts in developing countries, pledging around 7 billion euros over the next three years. However, the talks did not result in the hoped-for breakthrough agreement, with other countries, particularly the U.S. and China, being unwilling to commit. Carlgren stated that Europe remained committed to the goals, but other countries were the main hindrance to reaching a comprehensive agreement. Britain accused China and a few other countries of impeding progress by blocking a legally binding treaty at Copenhagen, intensifying the blame game that has been ongoing since the conclusion of the talks. Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticized the summit as being flawed or chaotic, and called for urgent reforms in order to reach a legal treaty when negotiations resume in Germany in June. Despite the criticism, Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard, who resigned as president of the Copenhagen talks, urged for optimism and emphasized the need to build on the progress made during the summit. She dismissed the idea of Copenhagen being a failure, stating that it would have been a failure if no progress had been made at all. We were able to accomplish something significant, a milestone. It was the initial instance in which we conducted a process with the participation of all countries, including major polluters.