EU Budget: Proposed Rise 'Quite Wrong' Says PM
David Cameron has insisted that the proposed rise in European Union spending is "quite wrong" as he arrived in Brussels for marathon budget negotiations.
The Prime Minister said he would be fighting "very hard" for a good deal for British taxpayers and to keep the rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.
"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," he said.
Mr Cameron is calling for a real-terms freeze, or even a cut, in the budget for 2014-20 - the sole subject on the agenda for the summit, which is being attended by leaders from all 27 EU member states.
The British PM is the first in line this morning for a meeting with European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council president - and summit chairman - Herman Van Rompuy.
Other EU leaders will be ushered in throughout the day to see the two presidents as part of an unusual pre-summit effort to avoid deadlock when the summit gets under way tonight over dinner.
The budget is a complex and deeply divisive process, with the UK balking at the European Commission's opening gambit - to increase the overall spending ceiling to a maximum one trillion euro.
This was flatly rejected by Britain and nearly all the net contributors to the European Union.
The European Council, which represents the interest of the member states, chimed in with its own plan, which represents a real-terms 2% cut from the spending ceiling approved for the current seven-year period.
