BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ European Union nations have ruled out any new concessions on farm imports or subsidies at global trade talks next week, France's trade minister Anne Marie Idrac said Friday.

Speaking after she led talks between European trade ministers, Idrac said European countries agree that the 27-nation bloc ``has exhausted its room for maneuver in agriculture and cannot go any further.''

``We don't intend to make any more concessions above and beyond what we have already made,'' Idrac told reporters.

She said Europe wants to see a ``rebalancing'' that would win more market access for European exporters to sell manufactured goods and services such as banking, telecoms and transport to developing nations.

Major trading powers meet in Geneva next week to try to get an outline agreement to slash rich nations' farm subsidies and open up global trade after seven years of arduous negotiations.

Recent grumbling, particularly from the EU presidency, France, have undermined Europe's unity going into the talks.

Smaller EU members, like Ireland, have also been critical of EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson's negotiating tactics and Dick Roche, Ireland's Europe Minister called on the EU trade chief not to bargain away the EU's farming sector.

``The reality of it is that unless there is an agreement that every member state that can sign up for, he (Mandelson) needs to go back and do some rethinking,'' Roche told reporters going into the meeting.

``Agriculture is a very important industry in Ireland and no fundamentally important industry could be ... just used as a bargaining chip,'' Roche added.

Ireland, which fears losing beef sales to cheaper imports from South America, is under particular pressure to ensure a tight leash on Mandelson, who negotiates on behalf of the 27 EU nations at the World Trade Organization talks.

A 'no' referendum vote against a new EU governing treaty last month in Ireland was partly blamed on Irish worries that the EU was trading away its farm sector. Irish farmers want to maintain barriers to non-EU food imports in any emerging deal.

Mandelson has also come under fire from French President Nicolas Sarkozy slammed the commissioner for seeking to push forward trade proposals that Sarkozy said would lead to a 20-percent cut in European agricultural production and a 10-percent reduction in its agricultural exports.

EU officials have said those figures were exaggerated.

Sarkozy also accused Mandelson of being partly to blame for Ireland's recent rejection of the bloc's reform treaty in a referendum in June. He said if Mandelson gets his way, European farmers will be worse off under a new global trade pact.

All EU nations have to approve any global trade deal reached. (Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)