Mubasher: UK Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed that work on the Brexit deal should be finalised before a summit of the European leaders on 21 March.

In a meeting between the two leaders at an EU-Arab summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, they “took stock of the work done over the last days by their teams,” commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said on Monday.

May and Juncker agreed on the need to conclude this work before the European Council on 21 March, Andreeva added.

“Good progress is being made on the three work streams that were identified by the president and the prime minister in their meeting on 20 February, namely the political declaration, the work process on alternative arrangements for the future and possible additional guarantees on the backstop,” Andreeva noted.

It is worth noting that the UK is due to leave the European Union (EU) on 29 March, whether London and Brussels could hammer out a transition agreement or not.

The commission spokeswoman also dismissed reports about a possible extension of the Brexit process as “pure speculations.”

“At the moment, we are not talking about a prolongation,” she said, noting that the bloc’s “working assumption remains that the UK is leaving on March 29.”