British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has scheduled an emergency meeting of parliament for Saturday 19 October, the day after an EU Council summit in Brussels.
The summit of European leaders, set to take place on 17 and 18 October, is understood as the last opportunity for the EU and the UK to agree upon a Brexit deal in advance of the 31 October deadline, reports the BBC.
"It's going to be very difficult to secure an agreement by next week," said Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, on Tuesday, to the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ.
After a phone call between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson on Tuesday, outgoing President of the European Council Donald Tusk tweeted that Brexit negotiations are not about "winning some stupid blame game".
.@BorisJohnson, what’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game. At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people. You don’t want a deal, you don’t want an extension, you don’t want to revoke, quo vadis?
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) October 8, 2019
19 October is the first time that a Saturday sitting will be held in the House of Commons since the invasion of the Falklands in 1982.
Evie McCullough
The Brussels Times
