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A summit of EU leaders seeking to fill a €75bn hole in the bloc’s budget left by Brexit dramatically collapsed after Angela Merkel led major contributors in rejecting a proposal that would have left them paying billions more.

The meeting in Brussels was brought to an abrupt end on Friday evening with the leaders deeply divided, leaving the European council president, Charles Michel, to admit: “We need more time.”

The UK’s departure has left EU states struggling to fund plans over the next seven years to tackle the climate emergency, aid poorer regions and continue to subsidise farmers through the common agricultural policy.

The 27 heads of state and government must agree on a budget for the next seven years, and the European parliament must give its endorsement, before the end of 2020, to avoid the EU’s spending programmes grinding to a halt. “We are super, super late,” admitted one EU official.

Michel, a former prime minister of Belgium, came under fire during the summit, which started on Thursday afternoon, for aiming “far too high” with a proposed budget of 1.074% of the bloc’s gross national income (€1.094tn).

Four member states, known as the “frugals” – the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria and Sweden – have insisted that the EU budget amounts to no more than 1% of the bloc’s gross national income.

They received the support of Merkel, the German chancellor, in opposing proposals that would slash the rebates they receive on their contributions, designed to ensure that the biggest contributors do not overpay.

Responding to claims from reporters that the summit had been a failure, Michel insisted that the issue had to be debated at the “highest political level” and that he now better understood the member states’ positions. “As my grandmother used to say, ‘In order to succeed we have to at least try,’” Michel said.

A late suggestion on Friday tabled by the European commission proposed to reduce the size of the additional burden on the the biggest payers, including Germany, through significant cuts in the EU’s science and research programmes. The compromise proposal would trim €10bn off a budget put forward by Michel.

Under the new plan, the four “frugal” member states and Germany would retain their rebates. France would also see increased cash for its farmers through the common agricultural policy.

The proposal failed to secure the unanimous support of the leaders, however. “That is democracy,” the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said at a press conference at the end of the summit. “It is a good tradition in democracy to debate on the different views, the different emphases … We are not there yet, but we are in a good way.”

Merkel told reporters: “The differences were simply too big.”

Diplomats from the self-styled “friends of cohesion” grouping, consisting of the net recipients of EU cash, put the failure down to a lack of solidarity among the richest member states.

The rightwing nationalist prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who has built much of his success on attacking Brussels, told reporters: “Our ambition isn’t only to be very strong friends of the cohesion policy, but to also be very strong friends that work together for a strong EU, and for a strong EU budget for the next period.”

During the last round of budget negotiations, it took the European council two summits to reach an agreement on the EU’s long-term spending, known as the multi-financial framework. A second summit is expected in March.

The French government launched a campaign Thursday, complete with an emergency number, to combat an influx of unwelcome visitors that have left Parisians in despair: bedbugs that have settled in homes and hotels to feed, uninvited, on human blood.

After disappearing from France in the 1950s, the insects have made a resurgence, according to the ministry of housing, which cited international travel and growing resistance to insecticide as the main causes.

“We can all be affected,” the government warned on a webpage dedicated to the problem, complete with advice on how to prevent and treat an infestation, and a number to call for expert help.

The common bed bug, Cimex lectularius, is found in temperate climates in the United States and parts of Europe.

The six-legged pest posed only a minor nuisance after the second world war because of the widespread use of insecticides such as DDT. But the banning of such potent poisons, because they were too dangerous, hailed a bed bug revival.

By the late 1990s, they were thriving in New York and a 2010 outbreak saw them invade high-end apartment buildings, hotels, even clothing stores like the lingerie outlet Victoria’s Secret.

There has also been an explosion of bed bugs in Paris.

The insects cost billions of dollars annually to exterminate by businesses and homeowners.

In 2016, a study found that bed bugs had become resistant to pesticides.

Another study the following year said the insects sought out human scents and snuggled up in worn clothes before tagging along home, explaining their meteoric spread around the world.

They hide in linen by day and come out at night to bite people, often while they are sleeping, leaving red, itchy welts. They do not transmit disease.

In Paris, extermination experts say 400,000 addresses including hotels, apartments and houses were treated in 2018, the latest year for which information is available.

This represented a third more than the previous year.

Illustrating how annoying the issue has become, bed bugs have even featured in the Paris 2020 electoral campaign, with mayoral hopeful Benjamin Griveaux promising to clean up the capital in 100 days.

The plan of the candidate, who has since bowed out over a sex-tape scandal, included specialised anti-pest “brigades” targeting bed bugs, rats and cockroaches, which would intervene free of charge for low-income households, and at the lowest market price for others.

The experts always said Brexit would mean paperwork. On Wednesday the two sides of the negotiation proved the point by issuing a flurry of explanatory documents through social media in a spat that swiftly came to be called “the slide wars”.

The unseemly Twitter row was provoked by a post from the Downing Street press office late on Tuesday evening in which the British government gently mocked the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, for his attachment to a slide first produced in 2017.

That document suggested that only a Canada-style trade deal would be on offer to the British government – then led by Theresa May – if it rejected free movement, regulatory alignment, a customs union and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice. “Now they say it’s not on offer after all,” the No 10 press office account tweeted. “Michel Barnier, what’s changed?”

Boris Johnson has railed against the EU’s suggestion that there needs to be continued alignment between the UK and Brussels on state aid rules and environmental, social and workers’ standards to avoid either side receiving a competitive advantage under a new free trade deal.

One of Pompeii’s most celebrated buildings, the House of Lovers, will reopen to the public on Tuesday, 40 years after it was severely damaged in an earthquake.

The domus, considered to be among the jewels of the ancient city that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, was discovered in 1933 with its second floor and decorations almost completely preserved.

The building was closed for repair following the Irpinia earthquake in 1980, which killed almost 3,000 people.

The restoration was completed as part of the EU-funded Great Pompeii Project, which since 2012 has allowed the archaeological park to undertake wide-ranging restoration works and carry out new excavations.

The Italian culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said the reopening of the domus is “a story of rebirth and redemption” and “a model for all of Europe in the management of EU funds”.

The name of the house, which dates back to the first century BC, was derived from a Latin inscription to the right of its entrance that translates as: “Lovers like bees pass a sweet life like honey. I wish it were so.”

The home’s impeccably preserved frescoes contain images representing life and landscapes. Two other restored homes – House of the Europa Ship and House of the Orchard – have also been reopened.

In addition, works to make the site more secure have been completed.

“Pompeii is now completely safe and so the loss of further archaeological material can be avoided,” said Massimo Osanna, the park’s superintendent.

Pompeii, which attracts almost 4 million visitors a year, has come a long way since 2013, when Unesco threatened to place it on its list of world heritage sites in peril unless Italian authorities improved its preservation.

The threat followed several incidents over the previous years, including the collapse of the House of Gladiators and a several walls. Other shortcomings included a lack of qualified staff, structural damage and vandalism.

The Great Pompeii Project also involved excavations at Regio V, a 21.8-hectare site to the north of the archaeological park. Work wrapped up towards the end of last year but over 18 months dozens of new discoveries were made, with one of the last major finds being a fresco depicting fighting gladiators. Human remains were also found, including the skeletons of two women and three children huddled together in a villa, as well as the remains of a harnessed horse and saddle.

Meanwhile, the House of the Bicentenary, an ancient Roman domus at the archaeological site of Herculaneum, a town close to Pompeii that was also buried by Vesuvius, was reopened to the public in October after restoration works that lasted 35 years.

A French ski resort has angered ecologists by using a helicopter to move snow from higher up the mountains after exceptionally mild weather left its slopes bare.

Officials at Luchon-Superbagnères in the Pyrenees authorised the “exceptional” emergency operation overnight on Friday.

The helicopter spent two hours transporting 50 tonnes of snow to drop on the lower slopes used by beginners and ski schools.

Hervé Pounau, the director of the local department council, said the cost of the operation would be recouped many times over by the business that would have been lost to a lack of snow.

“It will cost us between €5,000 and €6,000, in the knowledge that over the long term we will get at least 10 times’ return on that investment,” Pounau said in a statement.

Keeping the station open safeguarded 50 to 80 jobs, including lift operators, ski school teachers, childminders, ski equipment rental shop staff and restaurant owners, he added.

“We’re not going to cover the entire ski station in snow, but without it we would have had to close a huge part of the ski domain, and it’s during the holidays that we have the most activity for beginners and the ski schools,” Pounau said.

He admitted it was not “very ecological”, but added: “It’s really exceptional and we won’t be doing it again. This time we didn’t have a choice.”

The operation has angered French ecologists. Bastien Ho, the secretary of Europe Écologie Les Verts party, said the snow transfer operation was evidence of an “upside-down world”.

“Instead of adapting to global warming we’re going to end up with a double problem: something that costs a lot of energy, that contributes heavily to global warming and that in addition is only for an elite group of people who can afford it. It is the world upside down,” he told French television.

The February-March half term holidays in France – known as the “winter sport holidays” – are staggered over four weeks across different regions and are the busiest time of the year for the country’s mountain resorts.

Luchon-Superbagnères depends on this period for 60% of its income, but exceptionally mild weather has forced the resort to close all but six of its 28 slopes.

It is the first time helicopters have been used to transport snow from higher altitudes to lower resorts in the French Pyrenees, though similar operations have been carried out in the Alps.

Local officials said the snow would guarantee that beginners could enjoy the lower slopes and ski instructors could continue with classes for the next two weeks.

Pressure is growing on Angela Merkel’s troubled Christian Democratic Union to speed up the process of finding a new leader, amid warnings from senior party members that paralysis within the party could spread across the EU when Germany assumes the rotating presidency of the council of the European Union in the second half of the year.

The German centre-right has been in turmoil since Merkel’s designated successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned after CDU politicians in the eastern state of Thuringia defied instructions not to side with the far right in a state election.

While Germany has been abuzz with speculation about who could take the country’s largest and strongest party into the post-Merkel era, the three top contenders have been reluctant to enter the fray.

German media reported on Friday that Kramp-Karrenbauer could up the pace by announcing a timetable, or even her own favourite candidate, on 24 February. The CDU’s press office would neither confirm nor deny the reports.

Senior German conservatives warn that leaving the question of the leadership unresolved until after the summer break would risk spreading the CDU’s paralysis across the affairs of the EU. In July, Germany officially takes over the task of chairing meetings of the council of the EU and determining its agendas on issues ranging from Brexit to the European Green Deal.

“A lot of people are looking at Germany from the outside,” said Gunther Krichbaum, the CDU chair of the committee on EU affairs in the Bundestag. “Whether you want it or not, there’s an expectation that Germany and France take up a joint leadership role. We always used to be an anchor of stability in the EU because our big-tent parties were so strong.”

Merkel’s plan to gradually phase out her 20-year career at the forefront of German politics has been in tatters since her heir apparent, “AKK”, announced her resignation on 10 February.

The 57-year-old “mini-Merkel” from the Saarland region had struggled in the seat at the top of Germany’s largest and most powerful party since being elected in December 2018. Many moderates in the party felt she was suppressing her liberal instincts to appease hardliners calling on the CDU to tack right.

In the end, AKK’s undoing came after a bombshell in Thuringia, where her party ignored the CDU’s “firewall” against the far right by ousting the state’s leftwing premier with the help of votes from the aggressively nationalistic Alternative für Deutschland. The crisis remains unresolved, with the CDU’s leader in the eastern state also announcing on Friday plans to step down.

Part of the problem, Kramp-Karrenbauer appeared to hint on Monday, was that any CDU leader would struggle to step out of Merkel’s shadow while she remained in the chancellory and enjoyed high popularity ratings across the country.

According to some of Merkel’s critics, the new leader of the party should therefore also be automatically anointed as the CDU’s chancellor candidate for federal elections scheduled for 2021 or, more drastically still, lead the party into snap elections after Merkel’s resignation.

Merkel loyalists in the party caution against a rush for change. “During her tenure Angela Merkel has overseen a process of continuous growth and modernisation with remarkable patience and endurance,” said Kai Whittaker, a delegate from Germany’s south-west.

“The risk with the coming transition process is that the CDU could be dragged into hectic debate full of symbolic gestures and token politics, and lose the calmness that has characterised our party the last 15 years,” Whittaker told the Guardian.

For now, the race for the CDU leadership seems to be losing rather than gaining momentum. Two potential candidates, the youthful health minister, Jens Spahn, and the Merkel loyalist Armin Laschet, have so far declined to throw their hats into the ring. Another rumoured candidate, the Bavarian state premier, Markus Söder, has insisted he is happy to remain in his role in Munich.

Even the veteran rightwinger Friedrich Merz, the candidate of choice not only for CDU members dreaming of a return to a more openly conservative pre-Merkel era but for the influential mass tabloid Bild, has only gone so far as not ruling out that he would run.

Ousted by Merkel as the CDU’s parliamentary group leader in 2002, Merz initially wrong-footed supporters and critics alike at a business event in Berlin on Thursday evening, when he described the current chancellor as a “role model” and praised her determined but modest style.

Yet Merz, whom polls see as a favourite for the leadership, left his audience in no uncertain terms that he embodied a different, many would say more old-fashioned, political style to Germany’s first female chancellor.

Speaking after days of Storm Sabine causing havoc across Germany, he joked: “It’s a complete coincidence, by the way, that all ‘lows’ currently have female names.”

The EU has been accused of an “indefensible” approach to human health and the climate crisis in spending tens of millions of euros each year on campaigns to reverse the decline in meat eating and trying to rebut so-called “fake news” on the mistreatment of animals bred for food.

Campaigns range from those designed to counter official warnings about the risk of cancer from eating red meat, to improving the public image of veal products said to be crucial in “deriving value from young male calves” superfluous to the dairy industry.

The EU provides an annual €200m (£166m) subsidy for the “promotion of agricultural products” each year. About €60m has been spent in the last three years on 21 meat marketing campaigns, including in the UK, according to research by the Dutch animal welfare organisation Wakker Dier.

The stated ambition of many of the projects has been to halt a decline in meat consumption amid a growing trend to vegetarianism among Europe’s young people.

The livestock sector is responsible for about 14.5% of total human-derived greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists have provided evidence of a link between cancer and diets involving pork, beef and lamb products.

The description on the European commission website of one recent campaign entitled Pork Lovers Europe, which secured €1.4m for marketing, including a “road-show” with a pink bus painted to look like a pig, noted “that the consumption of pork meat in Europe has decreased in recent years”.

It continued: “Therefore, it is very important to promote pork meat to restore the confidence of the consumer, which was shaken by news such as the last IARC [International Agency for Research on Cancer] report.”

Scientists at the IARC, a UN agency, reported in 2015 that the consumption of bacon, red meat and glyphosate weedkiller increased the risk of developing cancer. The Pork Lovers Europe adverts targeted consumers in the UK, Spain, Germany, France and Portugal.

A campaign by the Association of Poultry Processors and Poultry Trade which will be run in six member states at a cost to EU taxpayers of €4.4m aims over the next two years to “contradict myths and fake news” about the rearing and slaughter of chickens for meat.

“EU poultry consumption in the European Union is still increasing but at a slower pace, as more and more consumers are mistrustful regarding the poultry meat production,” the European commission’s website says. The campaign, targeting a 1.22% growth in chicken consumption in 2020 and 2021, is aimed at “young children, professionals, media and opinion leaders”.

A second pork campaign received a €2.5m subsidy for an initiative aimed at Danes and Swedes. “Pork is no longer a natural part of the diet of young Scandinavians,” the commission website says. “They tend to eat less meat in general and to avoid pork in particular. The aim is to increase consumer demand and thus halt any otherwise expected fall.”

A campaign in favour of the Dutch veal sector to promote the meat of calves in the Belgian, Italian and French markets received a €6m subsidy.

“The veal market has been declining since the 2000s,” says a description of the project on the commission website. “There are various reasons for this: the economic crisis, changes in consumption behaviour and above all a lack of top-of-mind awareness. France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy are minded to fight this fall in consumption by boosting the image consumers have of European veal.”

Sjoerd van de Wouw, a researcher at Wakker Dier foundation, said the funding policy was outdated indefensible. “We understand that you need to consider the interests of producers but not by completing ignoring the interests of consumers and the climate,” he said.

In response, a European commission spokesman said: “The selection of projects is based on a strict and defined procedure involving external evaluators. The producers’ organisations send proposals regarding their campaign ideas and also participate in the funding of the campaigns.

“In an effort to constantly evaluate and adjust its existing policy, the commission will soon launch a public consultation on the EU promotion policy for agricultural products.”

Emmanuel Macron is making a last-ditch push for a tougher EU negotiating position with Britain over the post-Brexit relationship despite concerns among other member states that they risk blowing up the talks before they have begun.

The conclusion of an internal decision on Brussels’s so-called level playing field demands has been delayed as the French government continues to push for stronger commitments on regulatory alignment to be asked of the British in return for maintaining free trade.

Boris Johnson has in recent days made clear his rejection of the idea that the UK will shadow EU rules after the transition period given that he is not seeking “frictionless” trade at the borders. His chief negotiator, David Frost, is expected to build upon that in a speech in Belgium next Monday evening.

EU sources said there was a concern among some member states that negotiating avenues could be closed off even before the two sides sit down to talk in the first week of March. “You need space to find common ground,” said one diplomat.

The EU’s initial draft negotiating position, outlined by the bloc’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, two weeks ago, had called on the UK not to go below current standards on environmental, social and workers’ rights and stay in line with Brussels on state aid and competition rules as they develop.

France has, however, been an outspoken voice, albeit not entirely isolated among the 27 member states, in calling for more “ambitious” commitments to be a condition for the UK government in any future treaty.

There is a concern that EU attempts to increase its environmental standards, in particular, will be held back if there is a risk that British companies will be left able to undercut European firms in a decade or longer.

“The French don’t say the words ‘dynamic alignment’ in discussions now but talk about the need for more clarity and ambitious commitments,” said one EU source of the latest internal debate. “The text will probably go further that way. The problem is that this is a negotiation and we don’t want to close the door at this stage. That is the concern.”

Johnson has said the UK will not align with EU regulations as the price of a free trade deal, and that if Brussels insists the British government will settle for trade on WTO terms, including tariffs and quantity quotas on goods crossing the Channel. The French president, Macron, has in turn spoken in public of the need to ensure Britain is not given a competitive advantage in the long term.

Macron’s ambassador to the EU, during a three-hour meeting on Wednesday evening, which followed an eight-hour session among diplomats earlier in the week, insisted on Wednesday that there should be no scope for the UK to “misunderstand” the need for maintaining standards to EU levels.

The latest draft negotiating position is now to be circulated among the member states on Thursday but without the most controversial and sensitive section on state aid and environmental, social and workers’ rights.

The EU debate will continue into next week to allow ministers to then sign off on the position on 25 February, allowing negotiations with the British to start in the first week of March. “We understand that this needs to be done swiftly to maintain credibility with our negotiating partner,” said a diplomat.

Additions to the original European commission text already include that the “level playing field” commitments should prevent unfair competitive advantages “over time so as to ensure a sustainable and long-lasting relationship”.

In terms of fishing rights in British waters, the draft mandate says the two sides should also “uphold” existing reciprocal access conditions rather than merely “build” on the current terms of the common fisheries policy.

The UK will remain in the single market and customs union until the end of 2020 after which the government has accepted that there will be checks and controls at the borders with the EU.

A UK government source said: “Half the time the EU is telling us they are surprised we are not more ‘ambitious’ and the other half of the time they are saying we’re looking for too much.

“It’s now the EU who are cherry-picking, suggesting ambition only where it suits them and adding obligations that go beyond a standard free trade agreement. We are clear and consistent about what we want – not a bespoke or special FTA, but similar to the one the EU already has with Canada.”

Sinn Féin has started reaching out to leftwing parties to try to form a ruling coalition but potential allies have said there are insufficient parliamentary numbers to produce Ireland’s first government of the left.

Ireland’s traditional ruling parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, signalled on Tuesday that they would give Sinn Féin’s leader, Mary Lou McDonald, time to try to forge a rainbow alliance in recognition of her party’s stunning general election results.

McDonald announced that her negotiating team would be led by Pearse Doherty, the party’s high-profile finance spokesman.

The Sinn Féin team was due to hold talks in coming days with the Greens, Social Democrats and other potential partners. But few expect a deal that clinches 80 seats in Dáil Éireann, the number for a majority and stable government in the 160-seat parliament.

“It appears we don’t quite have the numbers,” Richard Boyd Barrett, a Dublin TD (MP) with the group Solidarity–People Before Profit, told Newstalk radio. “It would seem we are short of a majority.”

Matt Carthy, a Sinn Féin TD and member of its negotiating team, said the numbers would be “tight” but that given the public mood for change the party had an obligation to talk first to leftwing parties before considering other potential partners.

Sinn Féin took 37 seats after winning 24.5% of the first-preference vote in Saturday’s election, almost doubling its share from 2016 after harnessing voter anger at homelessness, soaring rents and fraying public services. Turnout was 62.9%, down from 65.2% in the 2016 election.

The Greens won 12 seats, three small leftwing parties took 17 and independents took 21, on paper enough for a majority. But some, including the Labour party with six seats, are reluctant to enter government with Sinn Féin.

The announcement of full results on Tuesday confirmed a realignment of Irish politics. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, centrist rivals that took turns ruling Ireland for a century, lagged Sinn Féin in first-preference votes and respectively took 38 and 35 seats, among their worst results.

Fine Gael, after nine years in office, is expected to go into opposition, raising a question mark over the continued party leadership of Leo Varadkar, the outgoing taoiseach. He has ruled out a pact with Sinn Féin.

During the election, Fianna Fáil’s leader, Micheál Martin, also ruled out governing with Sinn Féin, which was the IRA’s political wing during the Troubles. Since the results, however, Martin has left open the possibility of a pact with Sinn Féin or Fine Gael.

McDonald, in a tacit admission that her path to power may require Martin’s party, said: “I welcome the fact that Fianna Fáil have shifted their position about talking to Sinn Féin and understand that this election has changed everything.”

Fianna Fáil is deeply split. Many TDs think a centrist alliance with Fine Gael would ignore voters’ desire for change and doom both parties at the next election. Others resist a deal with Sinn Féin because of the party’s past and leftwing economic agenda. Some favour going into opposition.

Negotiations are expected to take weeks, possibly months, and could end in deadlock and another election.