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EU's Juncker says UK, Italian PMs misled over budgets

Brussels (AFP) - New European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker accused British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian premier Matteo Renzi Tuesday of misleading their citizens over budget talks with Brussels.

Public statements by the British and Italian leaders over a row with Brussels over big back payments were at odds with what they told other leaders behind closed doors at a summit last week, said Juncker.

"I don't like the way that certain prime ministers behaved after the summit," Juncker told a European Parliament hearing, referring to the summit in Brussels on October 22 and 23.

"I took notes and when I compared what they had said inside the room with what they said outside, they did not tally up," the veteran former Luxembourg prime minister said.

Juncker's comments will fuel a feud with Cameron -- who bitterly opposed Juncker's appointment as commission chief -- over an EU demand for 2.1 billion euros ($2.6 billion) in back payments from Britain.

Cameron has refused to pay the bill, the existence of which emerged during the summit, but the EU insists Britain will face punitive interest if it does not cough up by December 1.

"This isn't a British problem, this is a problem for the whole European Union and we have to find a broad response," Juncker said. "The impact is greater on the budget of some other states than on Britain's."

The Netherlands, Finland, and even bailed-out Greece and Ireland are among other countries to receive demands for more money from Brussels.

Juncker also had harsh words for Renzi, who vowed at the summit to make public the cost of European Union "palaces" in a row over Italy's budget projections, earning a sharp rebuke from then-Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

"I said to Matteo Renzi that I was not the leader of some gang of bureaucrats," Juncker said.

"I am the president of the European Commission, a political institution, and I want prime ministers to respect these institutions."

In a further swipe at Italy, Juncker suggested Rome was lucky to scrape through an initial review by Brussels of its 2015 budget despite running an excessive deficit.

He added: "If Barroso only listened to bureaucrats, Italy's budget would have been treated differently."