Denmark, the country currently holding the rotating EU Presidency, has hit out at EU countries for defanging the proposed Energy Efficiency Directive, and called for ring-fencing a key article imposing an annual 1.5% energy savings target on power companies.

"It's true that the member states have been more eager to water down the [energy efficiency] rates than support them," Martin Lidegaard, the Danish climate minister told EurActiv on the fringes of the London clean energy summit on Wednesday (25 April).

"Some of the articles in the directive - especially Article 6 - have been too watered down and, if we should have a chance to reach agreement with the European Parliament, we have to increase the ambition level of that article again," he said.

European states will be given extra time to carry out tests on nuclear plants, to ensure they can withstand natural and man-made disasters, before any laws to improve nuclear safety are proposed, the EU's Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger has said.

...Oettinger said on Thursday (26 April) that some reactors still needed to be assessed and it was more important to be thorough than fast. A final report is not now expected until the autumn.

So far, 38 nuclear reactors have been visited out of the total of 147 in the European Union. The commissioner did not specify how many more needed to be inspected, but said it was important to have "a complete overview", taking into account all types of reactor.

Brazil's government would have preferred to have avoided a showdown over the forestry bill, but that's not how things turned out.

President Dilma Rousseff's party lost Wednesday's vote on the law, which critics fear will unleash a wave of deforestation, by 274 votes to 184.

The bill contains few of the revisions recommended by her cabinet. It is now up to her to decide whether or not to veto it.