Brexit: Angela Merkel gives Boris Johnson 30 days to come up with solution to backstop - live news
Rolling coverage of the day's political developments as they happen
6.54pm BST
Here are the main points from the press conference.
If one is able to solve this conundrum, if one finds this solution, we said we would probably find it in the next two years to come but we can also maybe find it in the next 30 days to come. Then we are one step further in the right direction and we have to obviously put our all into this.
You [Merkel] rightly say the onus is on us to produce those solutions, those ideas, to show how we can address the issue of the Northern Irish border and that is what we want to do. I must say I am very glad listening to you tonight Angela to hear that at least the conversations that matter can now properly begin. You have set a very blistering timetable of 30 days - if I understood you correctly, I am more than happy with that.
I think what we need to do is remove it whole and entire - the backstop - and then work, as Chancellor Merkel says, on the alternative arrangements.
There are abundant solutions which are proffered, which have already been discussed. I don't think, to be fair, they have so far been very actively proposed over the last three years by the British government.
We do think there are alternative arrangements that could readily be used to address the problem of frictionless trade at the Northern Irish border and you'll have heard them before, whether it is trusted trader schemes or electronic pre-clearing, all that type of solution and more besides is what we will be wanting to discuss.
Remember the EU did not think the Alternative Arrangements Commission work was a basis for replacing the backstop. So we haven't really gone any further forward. And remember the lack of trust in the UK Government from all sides... https://t.co/T6goriYfOf
I have, in my life, watched a lot of European negotiations and, believe me, it looks at first as though it is, you know, irresistible force and immovable object.
What in my experience happens is that people find a way through and I think that if we approach this with sufficient patience and optimism, as I say, we can get this done and it is in the final furlong generally when the horses change places and the winning deal appears.
Oh for goodness sake we're back to the EU blink at the last minute rubbish... yes for internal negotiation, but Brexit is not an internal negotiation. And they don't on external negotiation (from Guardian politics live). pic.twitter.com/2XV0QTf2RZ
I am aware of the moves to reintegrate Russia into the G7 ... I just have to say that given what happened in Salisbury in Wiltshire, given the use of chemical weapons on British soil, given the continuing instability, civil war, the war in Ukraine, given Russia's provocations, not just in Ukraine but in many other places, I must say I am very much with Chancellor Merkel in thinking that the case has yet to be made out for Russia to return to the G7.
As the situation is today I would say there is not yet sufficient progress for saying the reasons we had in 2014 [for excluding Russia] are obsolete.
6.33pm BST
Here is Jeremy Cliffe, the Economist's Brussels bureau chief, and former Berlin correspondent, on the Merkel/Johnson press conference.
The Westminster lobby doesn't speak German, doesn't understand German politics and is endlessly willing to read things into Angela Merkel's statements that she doesn't mean.
And Boris Johnson knows it: https://t.co/TG5Hqtjv8E