Ian Ritchie, the chief executive of the Rugby Football Union, is making another push to salvage a six-country European Cup for next season. He fears that some unions will go into financial meltdown if the English clubs find a permanent way of occupying the nine weekends taken up by the Heineken Cup.

Premiership Rugby will not be part of European Rugby Cup (ERC) next season and is looking at other ways to fill the vacant weekends. One possibility is an Anglo-Welsh league, with Wales's four regions ready to fight their union in court for the right to play in tournaments of their choice.

An Anglo-Welsh league would hit the Irish, Scottish and Italian unions hard, and Ritchie, who will outline his plans at a media briefing on Tuesday, has been in contact with them, calling for renewed talks on Europe as a matter of urgency.

The Irish provinces, like the Welsh regions, are already struggling to hold on to players, with John Afoa following his fellow prop Tom Court into the Premiership next summer. In Wales, Cardiff Blues fear Leigh Halfpenny and Sam Warburton will sign for Toulon and Northampton respectively, despite wanting to remain at the Arms Park, because the region has only been able to make them conditional offers, uncertain what the budget will be next season.

The regions, whose £3.5m salary cap is the lowest of the Heineken Cup countries, pledged their support for the Rugby Champions Cup, only for the Welsh Rugby Union to commit them to playing in the Heineken Cup next season for virtually the same money – and it is pressing them to sign a new participation agreement that would peg their income until 2018, with the union considering setting up alternative sides if the 31 December deadline is not met.

Ritchie fears a vacuum being created, with the French clubs saying they will decide in February whether to play in next season's Heineken Cup. Premiership Rugby's chief executive, Mark McCafferty, admits that his clubs, who have given themselves a month to make alternative arrangements, could opt for a competition that would make future participation in Europe impossible because of fixture congestion.

"The regions losing their star players is a huge concern for Welsh rugby, but I find the apathy within the game there to do anything about it shocking," said Nigel Davies, Gloucester's director of rugby, who joined last year from the Scarlets. "An Anglo-Welsh league would present commercial opportunities, but it would cause a host of problems in the Pro 12."

While the RFU does not receive any money from the Heineken Cup, it provides essential income for the Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Italian unions. They have accused Ritchie of putting the interests and ambitions of the English clubs first, but he will again suggest that a European model based on overall control by unions, with clubs running the commercial side, is the way forward.

Time is running out to get something in place involving the English clubs next season and attitudes are hardening, with Premiership figures saying they have lost the will to compromise. Ritchie will argue that the health of European rugby is at stake and that after pride will come a heavy fall if the commercial value of the Six Nations suffers as a consequence.

Ritchie thought he had achieved a European model acceptable to unions and clubs, who have been divided on the issue of governance, but it crashed when the four RaboDirect Pro 12 countries and the French federation last month agreed to continue the Heineken Cup next season without the English.

English and French clubs served notice last year that they would be pulling out of the Heineken Cup at the end of the season. They felt ERC was weighted too heavily in favour of the unions and was falling short of its maximum commercial potential.

But the French abandoned the idea of setting up an alternative tournament, the Rugby Champions Cup, at the end of last month under the threat of legal action from their union. They proposed a transition year next season, with ERC continuing to run the Heineken Cup, and, along with the FFR, are proposing a shakeup in the way the game in Europe is run with a governing body set up in Geneva to oversee tournaments.