European Union leaders hope to reach an agreement on the bloc's contested 2007-2013 budget at a summit on June 16-17.

The executive European Commission has proposed the highest spending level while a group of six major net payers - Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden - are demanding big cuts in planned expenditure.

Luxembourg, which holds the EU's presidency, proposed a compromise last week, seeking to reconcile the two most extreme positions.

The majority of EU member states want to scrap or scale down Britain's rebate from EU coffers, won by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984.

Britain wants to keep the refund while Luxembourg has proposed to freeze the rebate at its 1997-2003 level in 2007 and later "set it on a downward path". The Commission estimates the rebate was worth €4.6 billion over the reference period.

The Commission has proposed replacing the British rebate with a general system for reimbursement for all member states with high net contributions to the budget.

Under the proposal, net contributions exceeding 0.35 per cent of a country's GNI would be eligible for a 66 per cent refund. The total volume of the correction would be capped at €7.5 billion a year.

Luxembourg has proposed bigger relief for Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the main net payers per capita, saying those countries should pay a smaller fraction of their value added tax revenues than other member states.

Following are key figures from the three proposals as calculated by the Commission:

(Note: Commitments are the maximum amount of spending that the EU can undertake in the 2007-2013 period, part of which may be spent after the period; payments are the maximum level of actual expenditure during the period.

The figures are in line with the methodology used by the Luxembourg presidency, which excludes the European Development Fund and the smaller European Solidarity Fund from the budget.

Figures using the Commission's methodology are in brackets.

GNI stands for Gross National Income. EU spending in payments currently amounts to about one per cent of GNI).

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