EU budget summit wrestles over cuts

EU leaders have begun budget negotiations hours later than planned, amid deep divisions over spending priorities for the next seven years.

The Brussels summit chair, Herman Van Rompuy, urged them to compromise and keep the EU budget focused on growth, innovation and creating jobs.

The two-day summit aims to reach a deal that eluded the leaders last November.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says he will not accept a deal unless further cuts are made to the draft.

He said the figures being proposed for 2014-2020 "need to come down - and if they don't... there won't be a deal".

Any one of the 27 member states can veto a budget deal - a fact which makes the negotiations all the more difficult.

The UK, Germany and other northern European nations want to lower EU spending to mirror the cuts being made by national governments.

An EU source told BBC News any extra cut would probably be made to growth-related spending in areas such as energy, transport, the digital economy and research.

The biggest spending areas - agriculture and regional development - are largely ring-fenced because of strong national interests, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The budget amounts to about 1% of the EU's overall GDP - it is dwarfed by the combined national budgets.