EU: Luxembourg's EU presidency has acknowledged that European leaders are unlikely to agree a new seven-year EU budget when they meet in Brussels next month.
Luxembourg's prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker told the Belgian daily Le Soir yesterday that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's decision to call early elections had made a deal almost impossible.
"It is less and less do-able, above all because of the announcement of German elections in September I think that our presidency will end badly," he said.
Mr Schröder's spokesman said yesterday that Germany would not budge from its demand that the EU budget should be capped at 1 per cent of the EU's gross national income.
The European Commission and most member states believe that such a limit is too low to fund the tasks conferred on the European Union by national governments.
