German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday welcomed for Berlin talks the leaders of three fellow "frugal" EU members -- Austria, Denmark and Finland.
Their meeting comes as the 27-member European Union braces for tough negotiations to agree a joint budget for the seven-year stretch 2028-34.
Merz has demanded the European Commission slash its nearly two trillion euro budget proposal by hundreds of billions, calling the plan "unaffordable".
To hammer out a joint position, he will hold talks with Austria's Chancellor Christian Stocker and prime ministers Mette Frederiksen of Denmark and Petteri Orpo of Finland.
The EU's "frugal" members -- which also include the Netherlands and Sweden -- tend to demand tighter spending discipline, traditionally putting them at odds with countries including Italy, Spain and Poland which support a bigger budget.
European Council chief Antonio Costa kicked off a tour of EU capitals this week bidding to hammer out a compromise on the budget -- with the clock ticking down to a December deadline.
The EU wants a budget agreed before 2027, when elections in several member states -- including key power France, where the far right is riding high -- could complicate any grand bargain.
The arm-wrestling will kick off in earnest at a Brussels summit in October, with a likely second meeting in November, before a grand finale in December when leaders will look to seal the deal.
Merz already called on the EU executive to reduce its initial budget plan, speaking in Dublin late last month alongside Micheal Martin, prime minister of current EU presidency Ireland.
"We need a budget proposal with cuts in all areas adding up to several hundred billion euros," Merz said then. "We cannot afford exorbitant increases in spending" at a time budgets are being consolidated at a national level.
Merz also said it was "unacceptable" to add 2,500 new jobs at EU institutions and urged a "thoroughgoing reduction in bureaucracy".
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