EU leaders are beginning talks on the bloc’s seven-year budget, with many of them calling for cuts in line with the savings they are making nationally.
Countries that rely heavily on EU funding, including Poland and its ex-communist neighbours, want current spending levels maintained or raised.
The EU’s Commission has called for an increase of 4.8%. EU leaders will try to reach consensus on their own figure.
The bargaining in Brussels will continue on Friday, or even longer.
The UK and some other net contributors to the budget say cuts have to be made. Negotiations will start with a draft budget – officially called the 2014-2020 Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) – drawn up by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
He has made cuts to the European Commission’s original plan, and proposed a budget worth 973bn euros (£782.5bn; $1,245bn).
France objects to the proposed cuts in agriculture, while countries in Central and Eastern Europe oppose cuts to cohesion spending – that is, EU money that helps to improve infrastructure in poorer regions. They are the biggest budget items. The Van Rompuy plan envisages 309.5bn euros for cohesion (32% of total spending) and 364.5bn euros for agriculture (37.5%). The EU budget is a small fraction of what the 27 member states’ governments spend in total.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel – who wants to restrain spending – says another summit may be necessary early next year if no deal can be reached in Brussels now. In a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday, the EU Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, complained, “No one is discussing the quality of investments, it’s all cut, cut, cut.” Thursday’s business was beginning with short, individual meetings between national leaders and Mr Van Rompuy and Mr Barroso.
Only in the evening will they assemble for talks as a group.
The first to meet the EU officials was UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Arriving in Brussels, he said: “These are very important negotiations.
“Clearly at a time when we are making difficult decisions at home over public spending it would be quite wrong, it is quite wrong, for there to be proposals for this increased extra spending in the EU.”
However, Belgian Prime Minister Elio di Rupo argued the EU needed greater spending, not less.
“We can’t have a European Union which demands, which imposes, and a European Union which doesn’t have the means to implement its policies,” he said on Thursday. “It’s a shame that for the British, Europe is primarily a single market,” he added.
“For me, for Belgium, Europe is more solidarity and prosperity for all Europeans… I hope that other countries such as Italy and France will support us for the ambitious budget.”
