Experts from several organisations say that reform of the Energy Charter Treaty, proposed by the EU Commission, will make it difficult to meet the targets agreed in the Paris Agreement - making it an obstacle to the clean-energy transition.

The EU has little to lose and much to gain from such a move, not least to demonstrate moral leadership on an issue of global concern.

The EU ought to consider banning Brazilian beef unless it takes action on forest fires, the Finnish EU presidency has said. A wider free trade deal is also at risk.

French and Brazilian presidents have clashed on Twitter over the Amazon fires, as G7 and other states plan treaty to protect biodiversity.

Nordic countries and Germany have joined up on climate change, as Trump and Brexit push northern European countries closer together.

Denmark is preparing an urgent national ban on food treated with the pesticide chlorpyrifos after an EU health warning, but European law could block the initiative.

"We don't want to tell people what to eat," said UN climate panelist Hans-Otto Portner. But the impact of humans' carnivorous diet on the climate is substantial.

In EU law, it is often left to national governments to set the maximum level of fines. This leads to a patchwork situation which could be exploited by companies concentrating only on profits.

There are no safe levels for exposure to the pesticides chlorpyrifos and chlorpyrifos-methyl, EU experts have said in a preliminary-finding into the pesticide - suggesting an EU-wide ban is a step closer.

One-in-five cars equipped with Audi's emissions cheating technology is still on the road, mostly in eastern Europe.

Spain was supposed to have limited nitrogen dioxide levels some nine years ago - but continues to fail to do so. It is one of 20 EU member states breaking EU air quality rules.

EU commissioners defended a far-reaching free trade agreement between the EU and four Latin American countries, against critics who fear it will damage European farmers' livelihoods and the global environment.

As climate protests grow, Brazil's forests disappear at the rate of two football pitches a minute, and a summer of European heat raises the temperature, will new pledges from the EU on deforestation make the cut?

Volkswagen Group duped the European Investment Bank, from which it borrowed €400m, by not disclosing it was cheating on emissions tests. Requests by EUobserver to see the anti-fraud report however have been consistently rejected.