Brussels  - European Union leaders were set to keep a cautious stance Friday on the question of boosting emergency funds for struggling EU and world economies, calling for action without saying how much, if any, money the 27-member bloc should offer.

A draft joint statement which EU heads of state and government were set to discuss on the second day of their spring summit said that the bloc should "keep under review" the size of a fund it maintains to help EU members who do not have the euro keep their currencies stable.

That is a retreat from an earlier draft, prepared before the summit, which called on them to "rapidly examine the possibility" of boosting the fund.

As late as Thursday, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the bloc should double the fund from its current level of 25 billion euros (33.8 billion dollars).

The fund originally stood at 12 billion euros, but EU members agreed in December to boost it to 25 billion after the bloc injected over 9 billion euros into Hungary and Latvia to save their currencies from meltdown.

The draft declaration also backed away from a pledge to lend the International Monetary Fund (IMF) up to 100 billion dollars in fresh resources as part of a broader effort to double its resources.

Earlier drafts had proposed that EU member states offer 75 billion to 100 billion dollars as a "fast temporary support of IMF lending capacity."

But Friday's draft only called for a global doubling of the IMF's resources, without specifying an EU contribution.

As well as discussing the economic crisis and a forthcoming summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies, Friday's summit was set to approve the launch of a new partnership with former-Soviet EU neighbours such as Ukraine and Belarus.

It was also set to discuss the EU's stance ahead of a global conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December. (dpa)