EU summit breaks up without agreement over budget David Cameron in Brussels. His negotiating style is said to have impressed Angela Merkel. Photograph: Wu Wei/Xinhua Press/Corbis The European summit has broken up after an alliance of the EU's richest countries, led by Britain and Germany, declined to accept a €971bn (£786bn) budget. Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European council, threw in the towel after the main "contributor" nations failed to resolve their differences with the main "beneficiary" countries. Britain made clear that David Cameron was happy to continue with the negotiations over the weekend. But Van Rompuy decided to postpone the negotiations, possibly into the new year, after a furious row about the overall level of the budget. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, was adamant that Van Rompuy's €973bn budget would have to be cut by €100m. He won some support from Cameron, Angela Merkel and Fredrick Reinfeldt, the Swedish prime minister. Cameron was keen to shave at least €50bn from the budget. Merkel was keen to see further cuts on the Van Rompuy proposal, though she would have accepted more modest cuts. The summit, which opened on Thursday morning when Van Rompuy held the first of 27 "confessionals" with all EU leaders with Cameron, broke up after a clear split between some of the richest and poorest countries in the EU. Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden are some of the biggest of the EU's nine "net contributors" who receive less money from the EU than they pay in. France was the key swing country. It is a net contributor. But François Hollande was determined to protect billions of euros in agricultural payments. Van Rompuy proposed increasing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget by €8bn overnight. This was unacceptable to the Netherlands. The manner of the collapse of the summit is a highly significant moment for Cameron and will strengthen his position in the EU. He had arrived in Brussels on Thursday as an isolated figure after criticising the handling of the eurozone crisis by the bloc's leaders. But the prime minister has improved his relations with Merkel after he was seen to take a constructive stance in the negotiations. The German chancellor did not agree with his call for €50bn in cuts to the budget. But she was impressed with the way he engaged in the negotiations. Merkel was deeply irritated with the negotiating tactics of Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission. Berlin believes that they tried to structure the negotiations to isolate Britain. One UK source said: "Herman Van Rompuy has fucked this up." Cameron said the Brussels summit had broken up without an agreement on the EU budget because the deal on the table was "just not good enough."