Duitsland tegen verhoging EU budget (en)
Germany has signalled it will not accept similar increases to the EU budget during the current financial seven-year period, which runs to 2013.
As the biggest contributor to the bloc's coffers, Berlin argues that farm funds in particular should be strongly cut back in future, a message likely to ruffle feathers in France - the key beneficiary of agricultural support.
Speaking at a Brussels debate on Monday (31 March), Germany's deputy finance minister, Thomas Mirow, argued that if member states continued contributing one percent of gross national income as they currently do, the bloc's spending would rise in nominal terms by 40 percent in the next seven-year period.
"A national minister of finance would argue that the ceiling of one percent seems to be already too high," he said, according to Reuters.
Instead, the minister argued that the rate of increase in EU expenditure must be in line with national budgets, while hinting that there is room for reductions particularly in Europe's package set aside for agriculture subventions.
"It is obvious that countries that have benefitted from the Common Agricultural Policy have a different view from those who have not benefitted so much, and we belong to the latter," Mr Mirrow pointed out, referring mainly to France.
Paris is due from July to chair the EU for six months and will moderate the concluding debate on measures to be proposed by the European Commission as part of a review of the EU's farm policy.
So far, France has been trying to avoid discussion on the levels of direct farm subsidies - figures that have been set until 2013.
But Mr Mirow insisted on Monday that the budgetary review debate, set to be launched after the elections to the European parliament in 2009, must focus on the issue of how to truly modernise the union's budget.
Within the adopted review, there should be "a clear commitment to abandoning those policies which do not need EU financing any longer," said the German deputy minister.
For his part, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is due to present his vision of the future of European agriculture policy in a speech to the main French farm union on Tuesday (1 April).