(BRUSSELS) - Leaders of the 27 European Union nations on Wednesday approved a rescue plan for the troubled financial sector, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced.

"The whole of Europe, without exception, approves the measures adopted on Sunday in Paris" by the 15 nations that make up the single currency eurozone and Britain, Sarkozy told a press conference after the first day of an EU summit in Brussels. France currently holds the presidency of the European Union.

"I say this with caution," Sarkozy continued, as the EU nations have still not reached a definitive agreement on the text which contains the measures, amid some reservations over state intervention from the Czech government.

At the emergency talks in the French capital last weekend, the leaders from the countries sharing the euro currency, along with Britain which came up with the blueprint for the plan, agreed to prop up the hardest-hit banks through cash injections and underwriting interbank loans.

Final tweaking of the text prepared by the French EU presidency on the joint response to the financial crisis should be completed on Thursday morning, on the second and last day of the summit.

"We can get out of the financial crisis through unity," said Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of the year.

European Council

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