Germany has reportedly scrapped plans for Brexit talks at the EU ambassadors summit next week after a "completely wasted" summer of negotiations.
It comes after UK-EU talks ended with little progress last week amid warnings of a no-deal Brexit if key issues are not settled within weeks.
The German government, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU council, had planned to discuss Brexit during the meeting on September 2, according to the Guardian.
But an EU diplomat told the publication that Brexit has been "taken off the agenda" due to the lack of "tangible progress".
While Angela Merkel had been pegged as a potential dealmaker when negotiations resume and enter a critical stage on September 7, the diplomat said: “Over the recent months Franco-German cooperation has gained new traction.
“Given this new reality it would be futile to wait for a white knight from Paris or Berlin to come to the rescue.”
Another EU official told the Guardian that the mood in the EU negotiating team is "bleak", adding that time is running out to negotiate the complex legal treaty.
“We have had the whole summer completely wasted, a cabinet that doesn’t understand how the negotiations work, a prime minister who, I think, doesn’t understand how the negotiations work – because he is under the wrong impression that he can pull off negotiating at the 11th hour," they said.
Both sides have said September is an effective deadline for an agreement to allow time for it to be ratified before Britain leaves EU rules at the end of December.
But the UK and EU have failed to move forward from complicated sticking points like fisheries and state of aid policy.
Following the latest inconclusive round of talks, the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier said he was “disappointed and concerned and surprised”.
UK chief negotiator David Frost also said there had been “little progress” and that an agreement “will not be easy to achieve”.
