In the first vote on environmental matters of its new term, the European parliament agreed on Thursday to delay and water down new rules aiming to ensure that products sold in the European market do not come from deforested land.

The European Parliament demanded further changes to a landmark law to tackle global deforestation, adding complications to a plan to delay the controversial rules before they take effect later this year.

Parliament was called to sign off on a delay requested by the ... Environmentalists said the changes would amount to exempting some EU nations entirely from the scope of the law. The amendments de facto restart the legislative process, as the new text ...