MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU Council president Tusk hopeful a Brexit deal is ready to materialize

“The basic foundations of an agreement are ready and theoretically tomorrow we could accept this deal with Great Britain,” Tusk told Polish journalists in Brussels

EU Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday that the basic foundations of an agreement on Brexit were ready and that it could materialize within hours.

“The basic foundations of an agreement are ready and theoretically tomorrow we could accept this deal with Great Britain,” Tusk told Polish journalists in Brussels.

“Theoretically, in seven or eight hours everything should be clear,” Tusk said via a live broadcast on Poland's TVN24 news channel.

A former Polish prime minister, Tusk made the remarks as British and European negotiators ploughed on with Brexit talks hoping that a deal can be found in time for this week's European summit.

“I had hoped that we would have received a ready, negotiated, legal text this morning so that member states could get to know it,” Tusk said, adding that “everything is going in a good direction.”

Britain's Brexit minister Steve Barclay described the ongoing closed-door talks as “intensive” but confirmed his country would ask for another Brexit extension if there was no deal by Saturday.

Tusk underscored there was “a great deal of turmoil” on the British side.

“But as you must have noticed, with Brexit and with our British partners everything is possible.”

”Yesterday evening I was ready to bet that it's (the deal) all set and agreed, today there are certain doubts on the British side,“ he said. ”We'll see, I'm still hopeful.”

In London, Number 10 have confirmed plans for Parliament to sit on Saturday to decide the next steps on Brexit. A motion will be tabled for both Houses to sit on Saturday, which would be the first weekend sitting since the Falklands War in 1982.

The Commons and the Lords will sit whether Boris Johnson returns from the continent with or without a deal.

MPs will be asked to approve any deal he brings back from Brussels. But if he comes back empty handed, they will be expected to vote on the next steps. The Houses of Parliament have only sat on a Saturday on four occasions since 1939.

MPs debated the outbreak of World War II in 1939. A Saturday sitting took place to discuss summer adjournment debates in July 1949.