'There was never any question of a European fund,' Mr Balkenende said after meeting President Nicolas Sarkozy here.
Mr Sarkozy is hosting a European mini-summit in Paris on Saturday to piece together a joint response to the global financial crisis ahead of a Group of Seven finance ministers meeting in Washington next week.
The Dutch prime minister said what he had proposed was that European governments set aside an amount equal to three per cent of each country's Gross Domestic Product which they could use to bolster the banks if needed.
'That would amount, if you add it up across Europe, to 380 billion euros (S$759.4 billion),' he said.
Leaders from Britain, Italy, Germany will join Sarkozy for the talks but France has said it was not proposing such a rescue fund to shore up European banks, as claimed by a European official in Berlin on Wednesday.
Germany strongly objected to the proposed fund and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman stressed on Thursday that governments must first and foremost find solutions at a national level. -- AFP