The top conservative candidate for European Commission president and the head of the German Bundesbank have come out against granting France more time to cut its deficit, warning such a move would set a dangerous precedent for other EU states.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg and long-time head of the Eurogroup forum of euro zone finance ministers, said in Berlin that France should not receive "special treatment" again after it was given two extra years to reach deficit targets only last year.

France, whose deficit stood at 4.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013, has signalled it wants to renegotiate the existing deadline of 2015 for bringing it down to 3 percent.

French Finance minister Michel Sapin is due to travel to Berlin on Monday to make the case for more leeway.

"France must stick to the same rules as Cyprus, as Malta, as all the others," Juncker, the centre-right candidate for the top job at the European Commission after EU parliamentary elections in May, told reporters at a congress of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) in Berlin.

"I would not expect France to get special treatment again," he added.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, speaking in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), called the request for more leeway a "serious act", coming from a country that should be setting an example in Europe.

"We should be making clear to France what its responsibilities are," Weidmann said, echoing tough comments from Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, who told the same German newspaper that deficit rules did not exist to be "fiddled about with".

France has a long history of not complying with its fiscal promises and the push for another postponement could stoke tensions with Berlin.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who will meet with Sapin on Monday, has voiced support for Rehn's tough line, though stopped short of ruling out some flexibility.

Martin Schulz, the Social Democrat (SPD) president of the European Parliament and leftist rival to Juncker for the top European Commission job, has signalled that both France and Italy should be given more time to meet deficit goals if they need it.

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