"The European Union now has a coherent approach to banning airlines," Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.
"This blacklist will keep dubious airlines out of Europe. It will also make sure that all airlines operating in Europe's sky meet the highest safety standards."
EU member states were spurred into action after a string of deadly crashes last year that highlighted the fragmented approach to air safety previously in the 25 nation bloc.
The blacklist, which comes into force on Saturday, contains 95 airlines, 92 of which are subject to a total ban.
Three are not fully banned but are restricted from flying into the EU with certain types of aircraft.
Most of the carriers are based in Africa and there are blanket bans on airlines from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia and Swaziland.
The few companies not from Africa are based in Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, North Korea and Thailand.
Failed checks
To draw up the list, member states submitted their individual roster of companies considered unsafe and experts then voted on which airlines should be included on an overall EU list.
The airlines were singled out on the basis of "checks carried out in European airports, the use of poorly maintained, antiquated or obsolete aircraft (and) the inability of the airlines to rectify the shortcomings."
Currently there is a patchwork of rules on suspect airlines in Europe with France and Belgium introducing lists of banned carriers last year, following examples set by Britain and Switzerland.
The incoherence of the current rules was exposed last May when a Turkish airline, suspended by four European countries, simply redirected its flights to Belgium which had no ban.
That incident was followed by a series of fatal accidents during the northern hemisphere's summer, including crashes involving Europeans in Canada, Venezuela and Greece in August.
The Germany-based European air safety agency was created in 2003 as part of an across-the-board security clampdown after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.