BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union on Wednesday is expected to publish its first blacklist of airlines that fail to meet international safety standards.

The list was endorsed by national aviation experts last week, but was still being amended up to its publication, officials said.

The EU executive was to finalize the list at its weekly meeting. Officials declined to name airlines on the list ahead of its formal adoption, but it is expected to include several of the mostly Asian and African airlines that were banned by some EU nations last year after a spate of crashes heightened safety concerns.

EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot was asked by EU governments to draft an EU-wide blacklist plan to close loopholes allowing carriers deemed unsafe in one EU member state to operate in another EU country.

Up to Wednesday, European governments used different criteria to ban unsafe airlines, meaning that planes banned in one country can still land in neighboring EU states. Those lists will now be streamlined into one common EU file which will apply across the 25 EU member nations.

The EU list, compiled from national data by the Commission, would also cover aircraft chartered from companies in non-EU countries. It will be published on the Internet and brought to the attention of customers by travel agents, both at ticket sales offices and on their Web sites.

Tour operators will have an obligation to inform passengers on the identity of the carrier.

Under the new rules, passengers will also have a right to compensation if the airline on which they were to fly was included on the blacklist or replaced by a blacklisted airline after they bought the ticket.

The Commission said it would review the list every three months with the EU's aviation safety agency, either adding new airlines or taking off carriers that meet EU safety standards.

The issue gained urgency following two deadly airplane crashes last summer - in Greece and Italy.