EU leaders will tackle the vexed and costly issue of defence cooperation at a summit starting today, aiming for modest progress at a time when budgets everywhere are under intense pressure.

The focus of the two-day summit seems more on defence and financial matters than on tackling illegal immigration, which the leaders will discuss tomorrow Friday.

Bogged down for the last few years in efforts to tame the financial and debt crises, European Union leaders are expected to agree today to joint drone and cyber-defence programmes.

That would be a minimum at a time when, for example, French intervention in the Central African Republic, the crisis in Syria and refugees from conflicts in Africa, all raise difficult questions of priorities and cost for Europe.

Opinion polls consistently show that most EU citizens would like to see the bloc adopt a more coherent and consistent policy, allowing it to intervene effectively in crises threatening its security.

But in practice, the issue goes to the heart of national sovereignty, with member states jealously guarding expensive military assets for their own use.

At best, they can agree to help in operations -- as in Libya in 2011 or in Mali last year -- by providing logistics or medical assets but not troops for common use.

Governments appear unwilling to take any risk that might compromise their national security, which has been ingrained in them as the main priority over hundreds of years.

"A common policy has never seemed so absolutely necessary but we do not see the desire, the ambition for the summit to produce real results," said Arnaud Danjean who heads the defence committee in the European Parliament.

Apart from Britain and France, no other country within the 28 members "has any appetite to take on external operations," Danjean said.

Many certainly step up when it comes to civilian missions, such as Germany, or in training as in Mali, or in anti-piracy efforts off the Horn of Africa coast but very few will go further.

The harsh reality too is that most member states have reduced spending as a result of the crisis and once cut, it is notoriously difficult to increase defence expenditure again.

Last year, EU states spent an average of 1.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product on defence -- some €190 billion in all -- but this compared with nearly five percent for the United States, which has effectively guaranteed European security since World War II.

In another development, the EU took a step Tuesday toward a new bank regulatory framework after the European Parliament reached a political accord with EU leaders on how to fund a deposit guarantee system.

Bank deposits under €100,000, which governments have pledged to protect since 2010, will now be covered by funds set aside by the banks themselves, a Parliament statement said.

As a result, the taxpayer will no longer be called on to help a problem bank, whose future will be settled through an overall EU "Banking Union" framework being negotiated to supervise, restructure and if necessary close failing lenders before they damage the wider economy.

EU Financial Markets Commissioner Michel Barnier, who first mooted the idea three years ago, welcomed the move as increasing protection for savers and as another "important step to financial stability."

A deposit guarantee system is the third pillar of the Banking Union after an already agreed Single Supervisor Mechanism and a Single Resolution Mechanism, currently being discussed.

The Parliament said the agreement reached with the Lithuanian European Union presidency requires each member state to set up a guarantee fund worth 0.8 percent of all its covered deposits within 10 years.

Depositors will be able to get their money within seven working days, it said, an improvement on the previous suggestion of 20 days.

With regard to the discussion on illegal immigration, which is also on the agenda, a paper was issued for discussion by the Commission some weeks ago but it already seems many member states are not in agreement with it, especially with that part that offers to tackle visa problems inside countries at war.