(BRUSSELS) - Britain, Latvia and Sweden refused Friday to back an EU plan to ensure an "ambitious" common agriculture policy, setting the stage for tough budget negotiations.

France, which holds the European Union's rotating presidency, had hoped to use a meeting of farm ministers to secure a joint commitment on the CAP's long-term objectives before talks on its post-2013 budget get underway.

However, just 24 of the 27 EU countries signed up to the text, which needed unanimous backing to become official policy. In the absence of full backing, it is relegated to being simply a document "from the EU presidency."

While technical, the distinction is important, because it would have set the tone for upcoming negotiations on the budget of the CAP, whose critics would like to see a sharp cut for the post-2013 period.

With a clear EU commitment to keeping an ambitious agriculture policy, cutting the CAP's budget, which currently swallows up 40 percent of spending, would have been much more difficult.

"We took the deliberations as far as possible to find a compromise," said French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier, adding that he did not want to completely gut the document for the sake of an agreement.

"A text has got to have its strength, it's got to say something."

France, which receives 10 billion euros (12.7 billion dollars) each year from the overall 53-billion-euro annual EU agriculture budget, is the biggest beneficiary of European farm handouts.

The document underlines the "crucial" role that agriculture plays in "our society" and the need "for the European Union to continue to have after 2013 a common and sufficiently ambitious agricultural policy."

The French text adds that the CAP should retain its "initial principles."

These include "the community preference," whereby priority is given to European products, and "market stabilisation," which is achieved through measures such as minimum market price controls.

"Farm income" is also included as a goal to be enshrined.

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