European capitals are braced for a chaotic Brexit after MPs again voted down Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, as resigned commentators talked wearily of Groundhog Day, but warned the prime minister’s deal was not dead yet.

Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said the EU had made “far-reaching additional offers and assurances” on the agreement at Britain’s request, and MPs who rejected it were being “reckless with the welfare of their citizens and the economy”.

MPs’ decision on Tuesday evening to vote down the withdrawal agreement “brings a no-deal scenario ever closer”, Maas added, and while Germany hoped this could be avoided, it was preparing “as best as possible”.

France’s European affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau, also said Paris was preparing for all outcomes. The EU had given “every possible extra assurance” and had “reached the end of negotiations, because we now have to protect the interests of Europeans”, she said. “The solution can only be found in London.”

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said MPs had “neither ratified the agreement nor reached a basic consensus on the real, existing possibilities: a no-deal exit or staying in the EU”. Spain was ready for all eventualities, including a no-deal departure, he added.

His Bulgarian counterpart, Boyko Borissov, said the EU had spent a “great amount of time and resources to ensure a fair deal … and [done] its part of the process. Now we have to be ready for a no-deal scenario.”

Le Monde reckoned the withdrawal agreement painstakingly negotiated over two years with Brussels was now dead, and “Theresa May, politically speaking, hardly better”. Her hoarseness “symbolised the state of a supposedly pragmatic country left voiceless by its incapacity to accept compromise with its neighbours”, it said.

The French daily Libération asked: “Is this the end?” Almost certainly not, the paper concluded, even if “no one has the faintest [idea]” what happens next. The prime minister may “literally and politically” have lost her voice, but “the possible scenarios for the coming days are uncountable. And none seems more likely than another.”

In the Netherlands, De Volkskrant said that after two months of negotiations, the fact the prime minister had managed to persuade only 40 of her MPs to change their minds about the deal since its record defeat in January in the House of Commons was “a savage indictment of her strategy”.

This had clearly been based, the paper said, “on winning over her own party members rather than building a cross-party coalition. She called her agreement ‘the art of the possible’ – but it seems impossible to get through a stubborn parliament … What happens now? To quote a Tory MP, ‘Fuck knows.’”

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In Spain, El País was also critical of May’s strategy. “She never really controlled the calendar, however much that was her strategy,” the paper reckoned. “May ran down the clock in a bid to push Conservative Eurosceptics and the EU to the edge of the abyss – without realising that it was she who was approaching the cliff edge.”

But the Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad thought that although the result of the vote was “clear as day hours before it happened: May was defeated, exhausted, trapped, all played out”, her Brexit deal was not dead quite yet.

The strategy of trying to satisfy both the leave and remain sides of her party was clearly unattainable right now, it added. She could make “a serious effort to reach agreement with Labour. The prize would be a softer Brexit. The price, however, would be even greater division in her own party.”

But there is another option, the paper said: “If MPs rule out a no deal, the Brexiteers’ horror scenario nears: an extension, ending in Brexit being revoked. The project they have dreamed of for decades is at risk, May will tell them, and voting for her deal is the only way to guarantee Brexit.”

The prime minister’s deal will come back to the Commons for a third time next week, the Dutch paper predicted. Although it conceded the future was “far from clear”, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung agreed.

“Brussels has ruled out renegotiation; a soft Brexit would split the Tories and possibly lead to elections that Labour might win; no deal or a second referendum would deepen divisions in society; extending article 50 for long would just prolong the misery. It cannot be ruled out that this twice-defeated agreement will rise again, in an hour of even greater need, as the lesser evil,” the paper said.

Die Zeit also felt the prime minister was not done yet. “Is May beaten? Perhaps not,” the paper said. The prime minister can now tell the public she has “fought to the point of exhaustion” for a relatively hard Brexit, but parliament would not have it.

If MPs “outmanoeuvre the hardliners” by voting both to rule out a no-deal Brexit and to extend article 50, “it will be parliament instructing the government – and it won’t be May who has to explain to the people why Brexit isn’t happening as promised”. A softer Brexit could result, Die Zeit said: “May has not given up yet.”

Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza was less sure. May had been further weakened by a second defeat for her deal, making a Brexit delay more likely, it said. True, she cannot be deposed by her party, because Tories tried and failed in December, but the sheer scale of this latest defeat “makes a third vote on the agreement more difficult”.