BERLIN: While German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas would like to see an “exit from Brexit” – Britain abandoning its plan to leave the European Union – he said in a newspaper interview on Sunday that he saw such an outcome as extremely unlikely.

In the interview with the Funke media group, Maas repeated the EU’s position that the withdrawal agreement thrashed out between Brussels and London, which was rejected by Britain’s parliament last month, could not be renegotiated.

He added that Britain’s only path to avoiding a so-called “hard Brexit”, in which London exited automatically on March 29 with no transitional arrangements in place to ensure the continued flow of goods, medicines and transport links, was to accept the existing deal. (Reuters)