EU and Britain just 'days away' from agreeing Brexit deal

Katya Adler on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show - Credit: BBC

A Brexit deal is just “days away”, according to a key commentator on European matters.

The BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler was responding to reports that 95% of the legal text is now agreed, with Adler claiming that the “general expectation is a deal will be done in the next few days”.

Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show, she explained: “Some progress is being made here. The general expectation is a deal will be done in the next days or couple weeks but the political decisions need to be taken.

“If an agreement is made, the sides will have to think about how they sell this deal.”

She continued: “This has to be over very soon because the transition period ends of the 31st December.

“We are definitely in the last stages. EU ambassadors were briefed by the European Commission that when you are looking at the 11 working groups in these negotiations, 95% of the work has been agreed. That sounds good.

“But if that other 5% is not agreed you can forget that 95% because the mantra from both sides is that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said that the two sides are still “quite metres away” from the “finish line” because of disagreements over fishing rights and the level-playing field.

But she also acknowledged there had been “more movement” on key issues.

She said: “After difficult weeks with very, very slow progress now we’ve seen in the last days in the last days better progress, more movement on important files. “We still have, of course, the three main difficult issues, the governance, the fisheries, and the level playing field.”