EUROPEAN UNION leaders trailed into Downing Street yesterday to urge Tony Blair to give up more of Britain’s rebate while supporting his demand for a review of Common Agricultural Policy spending in 2009.

As he desperately tried to keep hopes of a budget deal alive and isolate the French over the CAP review, the Prime Minister was meeting at least eight leaders of the EU within 36 hours. As he did so, officials and ministers privately admitted that there was no certainty of agreement at the Brussels summit next week.

The EU leaders urged Mr Blair to contribute more to support the enlargement of the EU to the east as a way of breaking the budget deadlock. Mr Blair told them that if they failed to reach agreement, it was unlikely that a deal would be achieved over the next year, when Austria and Finland hold the presidency.

That would leave the EU’s ten new members in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean unable to access funds intended to bring their creaking infrastructure up to EU standards. Eventually it would mean decision-making power over the budget falling into the laps of MEPs.

Ministers said that there was little scope for further compromise, but Mr Blair was told that a deal would be difficult without one. "In terms of the British rebate, the proposal should go further," José Socrates, the Portuguese Prime Minister, said after meeting Mr Blair. "It would have . . . more moral weight if he gave a stronger signal that the British rebate is an anachronism that should be eliminated in the future."

Matti Vanhanen, the Prime Minister of Finland, said he had hoped that Mr Blair would give ground: "We are waiting for something on that, but he did not answer," he said.

Janez Jansa, the Slovenian Prime Minister, said he thought that there was only a 50-50 chance of agreement next week, but he insisted that it was far better to reach a deal than to let the issue of future financing drift on. He added that Britain had promised to make a new proposal next week and he hoped that it would call for less of a reduction in rural development aid.

Göran Persson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, predicted that Britain would give more ground on the rebate, but only at the last moment. "The British presidency has some resources it can use in the final phase of negotiations and I am convinced they will," Mr Persson said.

Ferenc Gyurcsany, the Hungarian Prime Minister, in a letter to Mr Blair, said that Britain’s plan of a reduced budget and a cut in funding to poor regions was unacceptable. "I do not think that a considerably enlarged Europe and its new political aims can be financed from fewer resources," he said.

Advisers close to the negotiations said that there were so many objections from so many countries that if there were a deal it could be done only at the last possible minute with all countries showing that they had pushed to the last to win concessions. Mr Blair has already been attacked in Britain for being prepared to surrender £800 million a year of Britain’s annual rebate. Virtually all of his European colleagues believe that he should hand over more and the French demand that the reduction in the rebate should be halved.

President Chirac of France, in comments echoed by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said that the British proposal was not satisfactory. He said that it was necessary that "each of the EU member states carry an equal part of the cost of expansion that would include a refinancing of the British rebate that would be annual".

Mr Blair was letting it be known that although he was not ruling out fresh concessions — it is understood that the the annual rebate cut may eventually be £1 billion — his room for manoeuvre was limited because of his need to keep the maximum pressure on the French to reform the CAP.

Mr Blair’s proposal for a £24 billion cut in the EU’s budget, paid for in part by 10 per cent reductions in aid to Eastern European countries, has few friends but no countries have so far rejected it outright. The £3.4 billion British rebate, frequently denounced by the French, is seen as the only lever that could eventually force the French to come to the table to cut farm spending severely.

Mr Blair has had to acknowledge that that will not happen in these negotiations, which is why he is putting so much effort into winning the so-called review clause, under which the 2007-13 agricultural spending deal would be re-examined in 2009-10. Britain believes that a good majority of the EU 25 would back a review clause and the first four leaders to visit Mr Blair yesterday, the prime ministers of Portugal, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden, were understood to have backed the plan.

The French are matched in the ferocity of their opposition by the Poles, who lose out most. The Baltic states are also deeply unhappy, but are being warned that if they refuse to do a deal under a the British presidency there is little likelihood of one in the next year.

THE GIVERS AND THE TAKERS

UK Britain would slice off €8 billion from its rebate without securing reform of CAP, and its net contributions from the EU would grow from €39 billion to €58 billion to pay for enlargement. It would for the first time be paying a similar amount to France and Italy

France Keeps EU farm subsidies intact until 2013. The biggest recipient of EU aid, receiving €89 billion between 2007 and 2013, but is slightly worse off because of cuts in rural development aid

Germany The biggest paymaster into the EU, saves €2 billion because of smaller total budget

Poland Loses €6 billion of development aid, but still to receive €65.2 billion more out of the EU than it pays in

Spain Previously a massive beneficiary of EU funds, it is upset at losing aid because of its rising prosperity. Particularly shocked that by 2013 it will be required to pay more into the EU than it gets out

Czech Republic Wants a quick deal to get access to €21.8 billion in aid

Lithuania Particularly hurt by cut in development aid, which will mean it receives less than Luxembourg

Luxembourg Biggest EU net recipient per capita because of salaries of Eurocrats, strongly opposed to €1 billion cut in administration budget

Netherlands biggest net per capita contributor to the EU, happy to get €700 million bonus

Sweden Eurosceoptic big net contributor to EU wants to see its payments fall further