HIGHLIGHTS-EU leaders squabble over bloc's budget for 2021-27

European Union leaders start two days of tough talks on Thursday on a joint seven-year budget from 2021 and must work out how to fill a 75 billion euro ($81 billion) hole left by Britain's departure just as they face costly climate, migration and development challenges.

AUSTRIAN CHANCELLOR SEBASTIAN KURZ

"It is in the stars whether we will have an agreement."

"We will have a coordinated approach with Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. We just met and will meet Charles Michel together."

LITHUANIAN PRESIDENT GITANAS NAUSEDA

"I slept well so... and am prepared for a long night spent here." "The interest of our country is to have sufficient funding for cohesion."

"We will be very consistent with the convergence of direct payments to farmers."

EUROPEAN COUNCIL PRESIDENT CHARLES MICHEL

"There are many interests, there are many concerns. They are all legitimate but I'm convinced it's possible to make progress in the next hours and the next days. Everything is on the table to be able to decide."

ESTONIAN PRESIDENT JURI RATAS

"I think these negotiations today and tomorrow, and maybe over the weekend, will be very difficult." "We have two priorities - direct payments to support our farmers and Via Baltica."

POLISH PM MATEUSZ MORAWIECKI

"The talks are also difficult because some countries are pushing for new spending goals, they want the budget to have a different structure and at the same time they want to cut spending on cohesion policy and agriculture."

"From our perspective, there can be no agreement to both change the structure of the budget and to reduce its size." "New areas of spending, like research or migration, defense or innovation are important policy areas, but they cannot be at the expense of cohesion and the common agriculture policy."

GREEK PRIME MINISTER KYRIAKOS MITSOTAKIS

"We cannot be expected to do more with less. We need a bigger envelope if we want to support at the same time traditional policies like cohesion with "

"I expect a complicated discussion." "If we want to be very ambitious, we will need more resources."

LATVIA PRIME MINISTER KRISJANIS KARINS

"We'd all be pleased if we could come to an agreement during this session."

"To reach ambition, we also need to invest funds." "Do we want these ambitious policies in Europe, or not. If we want, we need to invest. If we don't want to invest, we must revisit these ambitions."

"I'm interested in us coming to a deal, I think we need that especially with Great Britain leaving, it's a clear signal we need to give to our citizens that Europe is alive and well and we can continue to function."

FINLAND PRIME MINISTER SANNA MARIN

"Member states are still quite far away from each other. We'll see if we can finish this week or we'll have to continue later on." "There is a lot of ambition for this budget. But let's be realistic - Britain has left the EU and we are in a new position.

"Finland is against rebates. Finland is against corrections."

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