This week the world celebrates World Malaria Day, a time to take stock of progress to date, much of which has been made possible through investments by the EU, a world leader in development aid.

Years of heavy-duty and expensive lobbying, including of a European commissioner for health, has not opened the way for mouth tobacco sales in the EU. The EU court in Luxembourg last week refused to lift the ban.

The European Union is on course to spectacularly miss a self-imposed road safety target, with 25,300 people killed on EU roads in 2017.

The European Parliament's agriculture committee meets on Tuesday, with speculation that the EPP will vote against a report on the EU plant protein plan if it mentions switching away from animals to plant-based diets.

Bisphenol A is toxic for reproduction and a substance "of very high concern", but PlasticsEurope has filed a case at the EU court to overturn that listing.

Companies are required to check if their 'novel' food product is allowed. But breaking that EU rule is not as costly in some member states as in other EU countries.

Breast cancer is still the most frequent cause of cancer death for women in Europe - but life expectancy of patients in Romania or Poland are lower than the EU average, and screening programmes vary hugely.

The European Commission is considering rolling back medical research incentives, on the faulty assumption they are somehow driving higher drug prices. But not only is that premise flawed – the proposed fix will do nothing to benefit ordinary health consumers.

Most EU states forget to tell Brussels how they will punish misuse of the toxic metal, despite legally agreed deadlines having passed.

The World Health Organization has called upon policymakers in the EU to take forward a decisive action to clean up the air for the benefit of citizens.

The European Commission is putting in place a tracking mechanism but the devil will be in the detail in terms of involvement by big tobacco companies.

Anti-smuggling expert Luk Joossens says draft bill in European Parliament on a 'track-and-trace' system - due by May 2019 - will bring improvements, and that a veto 'would be the nuclear solution'.

As our leaders aim to get the EU back on track, they should remember that healthy populations are the basis for strong economic growth.

The decision to move the European Medicines Agency to Amsterdam still needs to be approved by the European Parliament, which was hardly involved in the process.