EU foreign ministers are set to tackle the tough task of drawing up the European Union's 2007-2013 joint budget on Monday as pressure builds to strike a deal by the end of the year.
With the clock ticking, the pressure is on Britain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year, to engineer a deal that will not re-ignite latent tensions over who pays how much into the EU's collective pot.
Adding to possible sparks over the budget Monday, the ministers are also due to discuss crunch WTO negotiations, another sensitive subject which is fuelling a row between France and the European Commission.
The meeting on Monday marks the first time since June that ministers sit down to negotiate their long-term book-keeping after a fractious summit that month collapsed into a bitter exchange of accusations over the failure to agree on the budget.
Britain faces high expectations to broker a deal after being held in part responsible for the failure of the June summit because of London's refusal to surrender its rebate on annual contributions to the EU budget.
However, bitter memories of the June summit have already come back to haunt Britain's efforts to jumpstart talks.
A very general set of proposals to be tabled by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was "substantially criticised" when it was presented to EU ambassadors on Thursday because the text "downplayed the degree of consensus reached in June under the (previous) Luxembourg presidency" of the EU, according to one senior EU diplomat.
"The general message was that the farther we get from the June package, the more difficult it will be to reach an agreement in December," the diplomat said, adding that it "was extremely balanced between commitments and reciprocal concessions for many countries".
Luxembourg's proposed compromise package floundered because it was rejected by Britain, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
Britain refused at the time to give up its budget rebate without far-reaching reform of EU agriculture spending, which accounts for 40 percent of the EU's budget but proportionately benefits France the most.
Under a deal hammered out in 1984 by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Britain enjoys the multi-billion-euro cashback on its contribution to EU coffers to make up for the relatively small sum it reaps in EU farm subsidies.
Many diplomats agree that the key to a deal on the budget is movement on the issue of Britain's rebate, which even British officials acknowledge.
"We absolutely recognise that this is one of the issues that has to be resolved in order to reach an agreement," a senior British diplomat said.
Straw even went so far as to say in parliament last week that "the current abatement is an anomaly", adding however that "the most profound anomaly is the structure and funding of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)", the EU's generous farm payout system.
Tensions over EU agriculture spending are also currently fuelling tensions over talks at the World Trade Organisation where negotiators are trying to agree on the broad outlines of a trade liberalisation deal ahead of a mid-December ministerial meeting in Hong Kong.
However, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson faces a two-front struggle with the EU's partners at the WTO demanding big concessions on agriculture support and France outraged by offers that he has already made in the negotiations.
Mandelson is to brief ministers on Monday before heading to London for fresh talks with trade chiefs from Brazil, India, the United States and Japan on Monday, and further discussions in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday.