One of the challenges for the French EU presidency is to convince its European counterparts that Paris's demand for harmonised standards covering agricultural imports is inseparable from the EU's flagship Green Deal, and the core concept of European sovereignty.

EU leaders and eastern neighbours aim to raise alarm on "destabilisation" and "use of migrants for political purposes" at a summit next week.

Although only a recommendation, the latest proposal on police cooperation would allow them to arrest - or shoot, if necessary - suspects in other EU states. The EU Commission also seeks to automate sharing of facial-recognition images by police.

The family of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia urged EU institutions to deny funding to the major gas pipeline project linked to a power station co-owned by a businessman who is on trial for her murder.

EU banks back a Chinese company that is building a dam that will subsume large tracts of protected forest in Congo, in a national park confirmed by the EU as "a site of biological priority."

The EU Commission proposed a new tool to counter measures by non-EU countries pressurising member states via economic reprisals. But some member states, notably Sweden, are worried about protectionism.