BRUSSELS, Nov 7: An international summit next week in Washington should mark only the beginning of a global revamp of the financial order, EU leaders agreed on Friday, calling for a second meeting in early spring.

Meeting in Brussels to prepare for the Washington summit, European heads of state and government also narrowed their differences on whether Europe needs coordinated plans to drag their economies out of recession.

The 27-nation bloc, under its current French presidency, has led calls for a broad overhaul of the global financial architecture, prescribing a stiff dose of tougher regulation to fix the system’s ills.

“The decisions that we will take in the next few months will reshape our world for a decade and more,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told journalists. “This is not a time for business has usual.”

Eager to keep up the momentum for global reform of the financial system, Europe wants a new international summit to take place at least 100 days after the Washington meeting, according to a text that the EU leaders agreed on.

Meanwhile, the intervening three months between the two summits should be used for drafting concrete reform proposals, focussing on tightening oversight worldwide of the financial sector.

In particular, EU leaders want no financial product and no institution to be beyond the reach of oversight.

They also backed a call from France, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, for giving a greater role to the International Monetary Fund in assuring global financial stability.

“There is an increasing awareness that the institutions that we built in the 1940s cannot serve us for the purposes of 2008 in the way that we want,” said Brown.

However, cracks appeared in Europe’s unity over just how far to extend regulators’ reach, with both Sweden and the Czech Republic concerned the reform drive could go too far.

“We don’t need any kind of over embracing, over regulation,” said Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, adding that “we need better regulation” rather than more.

Taking into account such reservations, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “We don’t want to go from an absence of regulation to too much regulation but we want to change the rules of the game.”—AFP