Gordon Brown is set to offer his new British plans for tighter banking controls as a blueprint for the rest of the world.
A day after Lord Turner's report on sweeping UK financial regulation reforms was unveiled, the PM will parade the document in Brussels.
But EC president Jose Manuel Barroso warned: "What our citizens need now is not words, they need action."
The two-day EU meeting is part of the build-up to the crunch G20 international summit which Mr Brown will host in London on April 2.
On the Brussels agenda are energy security, climate change and, most crucially, the economy.
"It is the Prime Minister's view that the Turner review that we have published for the UK provides a potential blueprint for wider reform of the global financial system," Mr Brown's spokesman said.
"There are a number of important principles and approaches in Turner that he will be raising with his European partners, in particular the commitment to extend the scope of regulation and oversight to all systemically important institutions, markets and instruments."
First Mr Brown goes to Paris for lunch with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, before going on to Brussels for a meeting likely to produce more pledges of solidarity and co-ordinated action to tackle the downturn.
Mr Brown will take up the protectionism theme at the summit, amid fears that governments are espousing open markets while erecting subtle trade barriers in the form of subsidies or light-touch regulation to favour domestic companies.
Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned that some countries were starting to "play dirty", his spokesman said: "There are some signs of that. The Prime Minister's concern is of the more covert forms of protectionism that might arise."
