(Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it won’t be easy to persuade European Union leaders to renegotiate the Brexit deal.

After returning from meetings this week with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and France’s President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, Johnson told reporters he was making progress, but that people shouldn’t “hold their breath” over the prospect of a new deal, according to the Press Association.

“I want to caution everybody, OK? Because this is not going to be a cinch, this is not going to be easy. We will have to work very hard to get this thing done,” he said Friday during a visit to Devon, southwest England. Even so, Johnson said the “mood music” during his European trip was “very good.”

The Brexit deal, which took 19 months for Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, and the 27 other EU governments to agree, was rejected three times by the British Parliament. Johnson is demanding the EU scrap the so-called backstop, the mechanism designed to keep the Irish border free of checks after Brexit that’s a key part of the current agreement.

While Merkel and Macron have been polite and offered encouraging words to Johnson, behind the smiles it’s clear they’re not prepared to change the fundamentals of the Brexit deal. That suggests that unless Johnson backs down, a no-deal departure still looks like the most likely scenario.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs

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