MPs returned from the holiday break with little more appetite to strike a deal, and the prospects of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s minority government persuading a majority to back a budget — one that includes politically sensitive measures to rein in France’s chronic deficit — have all but evaporated.

Lecornu in a Friday evening address attempted to get Socialists on board by promising 1 euro lunches for university students as well as more teachers in public schools. For the conservative Les Républicains, he agreed to their demand to abandon plans to increase taxes on pensioners and doubled down on his previous pledge not to increase taxes on households and companies.

“The government will not give up on compromise,” he said.

Lecornu’s office earlier sent a statement to reporters saying “continued sabotage” by France’s two largest opposition forces — the hard-left France Unbowed and the far-right National Rally — had made it impossible to pass a budget, even though these two parties don’t hold a majority of seats in parliament, and even though most lawmakers — spanning from the Socialist Party to Les Républicains — had agreed to enter budget talks over the past few months, although they failed to reach a compromise.

The French constitution gives Lecornu two options.

Because parliament failed to pass a budget by the constitutional deadline, the government is allowed to legislate by executive action. The upside: A budget would be adopted, and lawmakers would have no immediate recourse. The downside: No budget has ever been passed this way, and doing so could be perceived as an assault on parliamentary democracy — sharply increasing the likelihood that a no-confidence motion against the government would succeed.