BAVARIA’S state finance minister called yesterday for cuts to the EU budget to make up for the loss of British contributions, which would hurt Europe’s poorer states.

“We Germans must take care that, after a Brexit, the British payments are not simply transferred to Germany and the other net contributors,” Markus Soede told Die Welt.

Asked how the EU should make up the money, he called for cuts.

Like Britain, Germany is one of the rich EU states paying more into the EU coffers than they get out.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said the EU meant different things for Britons than for Poles, who appreciate EU funding.In an interview for the Onet.pl website, Duda said: “We feel the real benefits. To us the union means freedom, becoming richer, receiving funds.”

He commented as a poll showed 81 per cent of Poles want to remain in the EU.Meanwhile the European United Left–Nordic Green Left group in the European Parliament called for the contentious EU-Canada free trade agreement to be frozen in light of Britain’s vote to leave.

It urged EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malstrom to halt the Ceta deal before the European Commission meeting on July 5 scheduled to approve it.

The group’s Ceta specialist Anne-Marie Mineur said: “If, in a major trade agreement such as Ceta, one of the players changes significantly in size and nature, the deal is no longer the same.”