The Government has launched a fresh attack on "astonishing" plans for an inflation-busting long-term budget for the European Union.
Europe minister David Lidington, in Brussels for talks with Euro-MPs, warned afterwards: "We are facing the biggest financial crisis in a generation. The way to respond to this is with budgetary restraint and the people of Europe will not accept a business-as-usual budget (for the EU)."
Prime Minister David Cameron has already slammed the European Commission for proposing a spending programme for 2014-2020 amounting to an 11% rise, according to Treasury estimates - effectively an extra £1.4 billion a year on the nation's contributions to the EU kitty.
He said the hard-pressed public would not understand anything above an increase in line with inflation - a real-terms freeze.
Now Mr Lidington has reinforced the message, insisting a growing number of EU governments are also putting down a marker ahead of detailed budget negotiations unlikely to produce agreement before the end of next year.
"Demands from some for an increase in the seven-year budget are astonishing, frankly, and show just how out of touch some EU institutions are with the difficult financing decisions being taken by governments, and households, across the EU," said Mr Lidington.
He went on: "Countries across the EU are making painful decisions to reduce their spending and to bring their deficits under control; the EU budget cannot be immune from this process."
He said the UK was serious about delivering on a commitment given by all EU countries a year ago that the long-term financing of the EU "must reflect the consolidation efforts being made by member states to bring deficit and debt on to a more sustainable path".
Mr Lidington said the fact that the UK was cutting the nation's administrative costs by one third across the civil service demonstrated that the issue was more than just empty talk, adding: "Our clear position is, and will continue to be, that the EU must also learn to do more with less."
He added: "A stable world economy is in everyone's interest and it is clear that we all bear a responsibility for making that happen. Demands for an excessive increase to the seven-year budget are incompatible with that responsibility."