On arrival for the third day of the extraordinary summit, António Costa said that the plan for the day was to try to find a way to unblock the impasse in negotiations by the European Council which President Donald Tusk suspended on Monday morning after 18 hours of discussions.

“Yesterday [Monday] an agreement was close and probably could have been reached if we hadn’t all been so tired.” Costa said.

He emphasised the importance of concluding negotiations before the election of the new president of the European Parliament (scheduled for Wednesday morning in Strasbourg).

“The European Council should not be conditioned by decisions of other institutions", he said.

The presidency is one of the top positions to be negotiated by the Council so it is important to have partisan, geographic, demographic and gender issues balanced, Costa told reporters.

Failure to reach agreement over nominations could result in current European Commission President, Jean Claude Junker, extending his mandate which is due to finish on 31 October.