EU officials have denied that Brussels was preparing a major Brexit concession to Britain to secure a deal.
The Times newspaper reported on Wednesday that the European Union was ready to offer a mechanism for the Northern Irish assembly to leave a new backstop after a number of years.
"Unfortunately, no bold new offer is coming from the EU side at this stage," said one official, while stressing that the bloc was not closing the door to more talks with Britain.
When asked if the EU was ready to make such a move, a different official replied: "I did not hear that."
Both said the bloc felt that the gap was too big between both sides' stance on the customs arrangements to offer any breakthroughs.
They said the bloc was ready to work on giving Northern Irish authorities more say after Brexit but were against the way this mechanism has been devised in the latest British proposals.
A senior EU diplomat in Brussels added that as far as they knew, the report was not true.
They said: "We don't know where that story came from."
A second diplomat dismissed the report as spin, saying that this has not been discussed in talks between Britain's Brexit negotiator David Frost and his EU counterpart Michel Barnier.
The report comes ahead of Leo Varadkar's meeting with Boris Johnson tomorrow.
