EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed on Sunday to continue post-Brexit trade talks in search of an elusive deal.
In a joint statement that von der Leyen read out on EU television, the EU Commission president said she and Mr Johnson "had a useful phone call" and that they had "discussed the major unresolved topics".
"After almost a year of negotiations, despite the fact that deadlines have been missed over and over we think it is responsible at this point to go the extra mile.”
"We have accordingly mandated our negotiators to continue the talks and to see whether an agreement can even at this late stage be reached."
Johnson said the two sides were “still very far apart on some key things".
“But where there’s life, there’s hope we’re going to keep talking to see what we can do,” he said.
Negotiators from both sides were continuing to talk Sunday at the EU headquarters in Brussels, with less than three weeks until the U.K. leaves the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc.
Johnson played down hopes of a breakthrough, saying the “most likely” outcome was that the two sides wouldn't reach a deal and would trade on World Trade Organization terms, with the tariffs and barriers that would bring.
Sunday is just the latest in a string of supposedly hard deadlines for the negotiations but, with Britain due to leave the EU single market in 19 days, tensions remain.
On Saturday, Britain took the dramatic step of announcing that armed naval vessels will patrol its waters from January 1 to exclude European crews from the fishing grounds they have shared, in some cases for centuries.
Brussels' tone has been less bellicose, and von der Leyen has made it clear that the EU will respect UK sovereignty after the post-Brexit transition period, but neither side is yet ready to compromise on core principles.
