President of the European Council Donald Tusk speaks with British PM Theresa May on the sidelines of the first joint EU and Arab League summit | Francisco Seco/AFP via Getty Images Tusk says Brexit extension would be ‘rational,’ but May wants to avoid it European Council president says he sees no majority in British parliament for a deal as deadline looms.

Extending the Brexit deadline would be "rational," European Council President Donald Tusk said Monday, but U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is holding out for a March 29 exit.

Speaking in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the EU is holding its first-ever summit with the Arab League, Tusk said he does not think Britain could approve a Brexit deal by the March deadline. He said he discussed the prospect of an extension with May in a meeting on Sunday, but she was resistant.

"Prime Minister May and I discussed yesterday a lot of issues including the legal and procedural context of a potential extension," Tusk said in response to a question at the summit's concluding news conference, saying he wants to "put an end to speculations."

"For me, it's absolutely clear that there is no majority in the House of Commons to approve a deal," he said. "We will face an alternative: a chaotic Brexit or extension. The less time there is until the 29th of March, the greater the likelihood of an extension and this is an objective fact — not our intention, not our plan — but an objective fact. I believe that in the situation we are in, an extension would be a rational solution. But Prime Minister May still believes that she is able to avoid this scenario."

In her own press conference, May said a delay would achieve nothing. “An extension to article 50, a delay to this process, does not deliver a decision in parliament, it doesn’t deliver a deal, it just delays the point at which we come to that decision,” she said. “It’s within our grasp to leave with a deal on the 29th of March.”

"We are making good progress." — European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

She said that the meetings she had held with EU leaders at the summit — including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar — had given her hope that a deal could be achieved in time.

"What I’ve sensed in all my conversations [with EU leaders] ... is a real determination to find a way through which allows the UK to leave the EU with a smooth and orderly deal," she said.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who is overseeing the last-ditch negotiations with the U.K. over potential legal guarantees regarding the Northern Ireland backstop, said those discussions are going well.

At the news conference with Tusk, Juncker said: "I had I think three meetings the last three weeks with Mrs. May, the last one having taken place this morning. We are making good progress."

Despite Juncker's positive assessment, officials have cited minimal forward motion toward changes that would potentially swing scores of votes in the House of Commons, which previously rejected the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement that May's negotiators agreed with the EU in November.

The main reason cited by May for that rejection is the backstop provision, and she has demanded legal guarantees from the EU that the backstop, if needed, will not become permanent. The EU has refused to reopen the Withdrawal Treaty and said it would only consider adding some language to a Political Declaration intended to accompany the treaty. In that case, the backstop provision essentially remains unchanged and so it is unclear that assurances in the political document will make a difference.

Tusk, at the news conference, sought to emphasize the collegial nature of the discussions.

"I can assure you, and I did also yesterday in my meeting with Prime Minister May, that no matter in which scenario we will be, all the 27 will show maximum understanding and goodwill," Tusk said.

According to the EU treaties, a country formally notifying the EU of its intention to leave the bloc has two years to negotiate its departure, or it is automatically expelled. For the U.K., that deadline is March 29.

Extending the deadline is possible but requires the unanimous consent of all 27 remaining EU countries. The European Court of Justice has ruled that Britain can unilaterally withdraw the notification, essentially canceling its plans to quit the EU, but the court's ruling left unclear the precise circumstances under which such a withdrawal would be considered acceptable.

May's resistance even to the discussion of an extension underscores how politically unpalatable she finds the idea of the U.K. remain in the EU beyond the deadline. Failure to accomplish the departure would subject the already-embattled prime minister to a whole new array of criticism of having failed to make good on her repeated promise that the U.K. would make its exit on March 29.

That would hardly be her first broken pledge in the Brexit process. May had previously insisted that the House of Commons would vote in December on ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement, only to postpone that vote at the last minute until January. Even with the delay, she lost the vote by a huge margin, which is the basis of Tusk's pessimism.

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