Francois Hollande snubs David Cameron as rift widens over EU budget

Talks on the European Union budget on Thursday night began on an acrimonious note, with the French president Francois Hollande snubbing David Cameron.

The French leader failed to attend a scheduled meeting in Brussels with the British prime minister and Angela Merkel of Germany, who are trying to overcome French resistance to cuts in EU spending.

After a delay of several hours, an EU summit on the budget for 2014-20 finally got under way. Diplomats said France was the obstacle to a deal that would squeeze the EU budget and cut billions from the pay and perks for European bureaucrats.

Before the formal summit talks, Mr Cameron had been due to meet Mr Hollande, Mrs Merkel and Herman Van Rompuy, the EU president.

The French leader did not attend the hour-long meeting. British sources tried to play down the incident, but diplomats said the president's non-attendance came amid Anglo-French tensions over the budget. "If he was new to Brussels perhaps he could say he got lost in the corridors. But he isn't new, he's been here three times now," said an EU official.

Diplomats said that France was the cause of "difficulties" at the summit, as the French president forged an alliance with Italy, Spain and Poland, countries that benefit from EU spending. A budget proposed last year would have set EU spending at pounds 830?billion over seven years. Cameron said on Thursday that that was too high, declaring: "The numbers need to come down."

A compromise budget of 780billion pounds was emerging, a deal which would save British taxpayers more than pounds 400?million a year. Mr Hollande and his allies were fighting to block that deal, but British officials were quietly confident of victory, thanks to support from Merkel.

Despite working closely together recently over military operations in Mali, Cameron and Hollande have disagreed openly over EU problems, including Cameron's promise of a British referendum. Instead of arriving in a chauffeur-driven car, Cameron made a point of walking to the summit venue from the nearby British government office.

Speaking to reporters as he arrived, the Prime Minister said that the EU should experience the same sort of austerity as its member states. "The EU should not be immune from the sort of pressures we have had to reduce spending," he said.

Minutes later, Hollande arrived with a coded swipe at Cameron, suggesting the prime minister was being unreasonable about the budget. The president said: "If someone is not reasonable I'll try to convince him - but only up to a certain point."