PARIS — French lawmakers will begin Friday what appears to be their final shot to green-light fiscal plans for 2026 before the end of the year.

Fourteen lawmakers from the French National Assembly and Senate are set to sit down in a joint committee on Friday to hammer out a deal on the state budget, though forging a consensus will prove difficult given the radical disagreements between political parties and the two chambers of the French legislature on budget priorities.

The current version of both the state budget and its social security counterpart are set to carry a budget deficit of 5.3 percent of gross domestic product, well above the 5 percent threshold Lecornu had set in October and the 4.7 percent level that Paris had promised Brussels it would target.

And while lawmakers reached reached a compromise on a social security budget for next year, the state budget — a separate piece of legislation — has proven trickier.

During its first vote on the state budget bill, only one lawmaker in the 577-strong National Assembly voted in favor of the legislation as amended by lawmakers. The more conservative Senate passed its own version of the law earlier this week, setting the stage for Friday’s meeting and discussions that could continue through Saturday.

Should those talks fail, lawmakers will likely be forced to pass a stopgap measure that rolls over the 2025 budget into next year and get back to work on finalizing a 2026 budget in the new year.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu warned in November that failing to get the budget done by Jan. 1 was a “danger that weighs on the French economy.” The French government last year also failed to finalized its fiscals plans before the calendar turned to 2025.

“We must have a budget before the end of the year,” Lecornu said Wednesday while answering questions in the Senate.

Lecornu and his government have expressed confidence that a compromise can still be found and are vowing to do whatever it takes to reach that goal, including facilitating informal talks ahead of Friday’s meeting.

During a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Lecornu asked his ministers “to bend over backward” to make sure a budget gets passed, according to government spokesperson Maud Bregeon.

The Socialist Party, which was instrumental in passing the social security budget, could again play a kingmaker role. After warning that they could vote against the current text, they are now reportedly mulling an abstention in exchange for €10 billion of extra spending, which would be financed by tax hikes.

But lawmakers from various political persuasions directly involved in budget talks are little optimistic of the chances of success.

Far-left MP Eric Coquerel, the president of the National Assembly Finance Committee, predicted that talks would fail, as did centrist Charles de Courson.

“The die is cast, it can’t pass,” de Courson said.

Paul de Villepin contributed to this report.