(BRUSSELS) - EU accounting experts hastily backed plans on Wednesday to relax accounting rules in order to help banks cope better with the financial crisis, paving the way for formal adoption later in the day.

"The accounting regulatory committee has just voted unanimously in favour of the changes," European Commission spokesman Oliver Drewes told journalists in Brussels.

Currently, banks are required to book the going market value for many of the toxic assets at the root of the financial crisis, which has forced some to take huge write-downs because prices have collapsed.

At the end of September, US regulators offered new guidelines aimed at easing accounting rules blamed by some analysts for worsening the crisis for banks with heavy losses from US mortgage securities.

Last week, EU finance ministers called for looser rules on accounting for banks' assets over fears that the US changes could put European banks at a disadvantage.

The proposed change in European accounting rules would allow banks to reclassify some assets so that they do not have to be marked to market prices, putting them on equal footing with their US rivals.

Drewes said that the European Parliament was due to adopt the changes through an "ultra-speedy process", opening the way for the new rule to be adopted within the day as EU leaders hold a summit in Brussels.

Once adopted, the rule change would be retroactive to July 1, so that banks could apply it to their third quarter accounts.

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