The Withdrawal Agreement seems to have a finalized Art. 132. The extension of the transition period now reads (in para. 1): “Notwithstanding Art. 126, the Joint Committee may, before 1 July 2020, adopt a single decision extending the transition period for up to one or two years.”
The drafting introduces some uncertainty. Before we all read “up to” to mean that the Joint Committee could pick any date up to the maximum date which was not finalized.
The current drafting “up to one or two years” thus raises the question why the “one or” is in there. If it is “up to two years” the JC could well have picked an earlier date. So does the current wording indicate just two choices? One or two years?
I would argue for flexibility - but think the drafting is suboptimal.
Source: the Art. 50 documents on the EU Commission website.
