(ANNECY) - Direct handouts to Europe's farmers should be reduced, EU Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said Tuesday, amid pressure to cut overall agriculture subsidies.

"In general there are huge pressures on the European Union budget and intense competition for the various spending priorities," Fischer Boel told a meeting of EU farm ministers in Annecy, eastern France.

"How much money will we have?" for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the bloc's next medium-term budget from 2013, she asked.

France, Europe's biggest farming power, has led a battle in recent years against growing calls by Britain to reduce EU farm spending in order to direct more funds towards such things as research and education.

Despite reforms, farm hand-outs remain the single biggest item in the combined EU budget, swallowing up about 40 percent of the whole.

Fischer Boel said she did not believe it was necessary to "completely revise" the CAP but stressed that changes were necessary.

To that end, direct subsidies to farmers should be reduced to boost non-direct aid not linked to production, such as supporting rural development and environmental projects.

The move would cut the current array of payments made automatically on the basis of the number of livestock reared or the amount of land under cultivation.

"Whatever the size of the CAP budget after 2013 it is difficult to imagine that we will give a smaller slice of the cake to goals associated with rural development. The opposite seems more likely," she said.

France, which holds the EU's rotating presidency to December, argues that it is especially important to maintain levels of direct aid to farmers during the current world food crisis which has seen prices shoot up.

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