Ireland is expected to be rapped over the knuckles for its unilateral bank deposit guarantee scheme by Gordon Brown and the other leaders of Europe’s biggest economies when they meet in Paris at a summit today.

President Sarkozy, of France, who has the called the meeting, is hoping to secure an agreement from Britain, Germany and Italy that European Union nations should act in concert before intervening to prop up their banking systems. A French diplomat, speaking off the record, said that the proposed statement was intended as an implicit criticism of Dublin’s go-it-alone policy.

He also said that José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, would confirm the temporary easing of European Union competition rules to allow bank rescues through mergers and the use of public funds. The rules were, in effect, set aside this week to enable officials to save Fortis, the Benelux bank, and Dexia, its Franco-Belgian rival.

Mr Barroso is unlikely to accept a French request to allow a rise in eurozone budget deficits during the global market turmoil, according to the diplomat.

The summit will bring together the leaders of Europe’s G8 members – Mr Brown, Mr Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister – with Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the eurozone finance ministers’ committee, and Mr Barroso.

Mr Sarkozy’s attempts to forge a united front have been undermined by bickering over a proposal floated by France and the Netherlands for a €300 billion (£233.6 billion) bank rescue fund. The plan was rejected by Mrs Merkel, who agreed to attend the summit only on condition that it was withdrawn. Mr Brown was also hostile to the scheme.

With his big idea off the agenda, Mr Sarkozy engaged in a frantic attempt to salvage the meeting, pulling out of a speech on job training yesterday. Mr Sarkozy hopes that Britain, Germany and Italy will back a series of proposals to be put to other EU leaders and to the next G8 summit to “lay new foundations for international finance”.

He is pressing Mr Brown and the German and Italian leaders to agree to proposals for tighter regulation of bank liquidity, credit capacity and securitisation.

The French President also wants them to back his plan to ease the mark-to-market rule, under which banks must declare the worth of their assets on the basis of real-time stock exchange valuations. France believes that a long-term assessment of the value of these assets would calm instability and ease pressure on the banks.

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