Once a UN mandate has been obtained for the mission, which may be approved as early as Thursday in New York, EU planners hope to get troops on the ground by late February, diplomats said.
Command would be handed to France with headquarters in Greece.
“We cannot be more pleased,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. “Europe is going to come to the military support of the Central African Republic.”
For President Francois Hollande, under pressure at home, the decision will be welcome after he committed troops to France’s former colony and then sought EU support.
“An EU deployment now (will) offer Paris both some immediate operational benefits – freeing up French troops – and political relief,” said Richard Gowan of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“It would at least show that the EU has not deserted France completely in Africa,” Gowan said.
At a late December EU leaders’ summit, Hollande had pressed his peers for a gesture of solidarity even if they did not want to commit troops on the ground.
So far, only the small Baltic nation of Estonia has offered troops, saying 55 could arrive in CAR in February to back up French efforts which had helped prevent a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
Poland, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Spain are the most likely to step up next, diplomatic sources said.
Along with the French, some 4,000 African troops are in CAR under a UN mandate, trying to end violence between Christian militias and ex-rebels who installed the country’s first Muslim leader in a coup in March.
Last week the UN’s humanitarian operations director warned the country risked descending into genocide.
The violence “has all the elements that we have seen elsewhere in places like Rwanda, Bosnia. The elements are there for a genocide, there is no question about that”, director John Ging said.
Bangui mayor Catherine Samba-Panza was on Monday elected interim president by the transitional parliament, tasked with restoring peace and organising general elections by mid-2015.
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