Brussels - Stability was the watchword for European Union leaders Thursday as they gathered in Brussels for a summit to re- appoint the head of the bloc's executive and discuss new ways to regulate the banking sector.

"The key word binding the agenda is stability: a healthy and transparent financial system, stability in the social system and labour market, and institutional stability," one top politician from an EU member state said ahead of the two-day meeting.

The EU is currently struggling to rebuild and reinforce its financial system following the autumn's disastrous crash.

The summit is set to approve a call for a new system of financial regulators to predict and prevent crashes. One will focus on national economies, while three others will work on major companies.

The issue has proven deeply controversial in the past, with Britain arguing that regulators should not be allowed to force governments to bail out financial firms.

But diplomats said that the summit was likely to end in a compromise rather than a stand-off with British premier Gordon Brown.

"This is not about overruling someone," the politician who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

The summit is also set to call for the re-appointment of the head of the EU's executive, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, for another five-year term, in a bid to give the EU some internal stability as it struggles to adopt a new set of rules.

The EU is hoping to introduce those rules, the Lisbon Treaty, by the end of the year, but it will only be able to do so if Irish voters back it in a referendum in the autumn, after they rejected it in a vote in June 2008.

To convince Irish voters to say yes to Lisbon, the EU's leaders are therefore expected to approve a legally-binding document promising that the treaty will not affect Ireland's neutrality or tax and family laws - fears cited as the key reasons that Ireland rejected the treaty the first time round.

Diplomats said that it was not clear whether the document would be attached to a future EU treaty, as Ireland wants, or would be left as a simple summit statement, as many other EU states would prefer.

The summit was also expected to discuss problems of unemployment and illegal migration, climate change, relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Balkan states and Ukraine. (dpa)