The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has decided to use the EU's employment summit in Luxembourg on Friday to appeal to fellow leaders to reconsider the abolition of internal EU duty-free allowances in June 1999, diplomatic sources say.

Although the issue is not formally on the agenda and the Luxembourg presidency confirms that it has not been approached to include it, Mr Ahern is understood to want to up the profile of the campaign for retention and believes that the summit's jobs focus provides an ideal opportunity.

Campaigners for duty-free say that the industry supports 140,000 jobs directly in Europe and its abolition will have major knock-on effects on the price of travel and tourism. They have strong support from Ireland and the Nordic countries, whose peripherality makes them most dependent on air and sea travel. They will require unanimity to reverse this position. They complain that the Commission has failed to live up to an undertaking it gave to complete an objective study of the effects of abolition. Mr Ahern is likely to return to the theme in his speech.

The well-funded campaign is promising to bring tens of thousands to the streets of Brussels in December, facilitated by free transport from many of the airlines involved in the campaign. The Commission points to the fact that abolition was approved unanimously by the the Council of Ministers in 1991 as part of the drive to make the single market a reality. It says that the £1.5 billion in annual forgone duties represents a serious distortion of the market and it strongly rejects the contention that most of the 140,000 jobs are threatened, pointing to the massive growth of shopping malls in the US.

Final preparations for the jobs summit will be made today when finance and social affairs ministers gather in Brussels for a joint council. The presidency is still determined that the summit will agree to back concrete measures, rather than the usual declarations of concern and, specifically, Commission proposals for a close annual monitoring of member-states' reforms of their labour markets.

It has circulated a "non-paper" to test the water on whether the Commission's more controversial proposals to set quantified guidelines may be acceptable to the most sceptical, particularly the Germans, in a slightly different form. The document refers to "precise objectives" instead of "quantified objectives" and suggests leaving overall targets to a separate aspirational document.

Finance ministers will earlier discuss the shape and constitutional standing of the so-called "euro-x" group in which participants in the euro will co-ordinate their monetary policies once the euro is launched. The Germans are insisting that the group be informal, non-decision-making and, although meeting in parallel to Ecofin, will not pre-empt the decisions of Finance Ministers' meetings.

France had hoped for a more formal structure but appears willing now to accept this formula. With the British expressing concern that they may be excluded from influence, Ireland is backing the suggestion that non-euro members should be able to attend as observers. It would also like to see the Commission involved.

The meeting will also attempt to agree on a nominee for the next president of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.