Santos Silva said he had been informed that a planned meeting between the EU’s chief negotiator for Brexit, Michel Barnier, with the ambassadors of the bloc’s 27 member states, scheduled for 4 p.m. on Wednesday, had been postponed. That, against the backdrop of intense negotiations with the government in London, he said, prompted him to assume that "the possibility to reach agreement on some points" was still open.

“I just want to say that the prospects are that negotiations may be concluded with some form of agreement,” Santos Silva told journalists in parliament in Lisbon. “The negotiating teams are working intensively... and the postponement of the meeting scheduled for the start of the afternoon... is due to the possibility of being able to close some points that are still open.

"At this point I cannot tell you what the final result will be; I can only say that I hope, and we all hope in Portugal, that the outcome of an agreement can be reached," he said.

The minister refused to say whether the information he had received made him confident about the possibility of a deal, saying that he had "no divination skills" and that everyone who has followed the Brexit process started in June 2016, after the referendum on the issue, know that "it is more reasonable to place bets on the results of games than [to make] predictions on the Brexit process.”

On a possible delay to Brexit, the minister, who on Wednesday testified to the committees of European affairs and foreign affairs on the European Council taking place on Thursday and Friday, restated Portugal’s position that it is ready even for "an prolonged extension" in preference to "a series of postponements", so as to allow the "time needed to reach an agreement."

In his statements to journalists, Santos Silva was cautious on the matter of a delay, stressing that there were currently "several possibilities open" and citing the statement made a few hours previously in London, that if there is no agreement, the UK’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, would request a postponement.

Even with an agreement, Santos Silva said, "European leaders will have to give their political validation" and the British and European Parliaments their approval, so it remained "very possible that even if there is an agreement, an extension of the [Brexit] deadline is necessary."

Negotiations between the UK government and Brussels intensified last week after a meeting between Johnson and his Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, with a view to finding a solution before the European Council taking place on Thursday and Friday and to conclude the Brexit process by the current deadline of 31 October.