After the latest GDP data showed that Italy’s economy didn’t grow at all during the third quarter amid a spreading European slump that’s likely inspiring panic in Brussels, the country’s emboldened populist leaders are refusing to surrender in what has become a political game of chicken with the EU over a proposal that calls for an expansion of Italy’s budget deficit to 2.4% to fund pension benefits, welfare programs and tax cuts.

Ahead of a Tuesday deadline to resubmit its budget proposal, which Brussels rejected last month, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was said to be holding a last-minute meeting with the two men who are really running Italy, Deputy PM’s Matteo Salvini, of the anti-immigrant La Lega, and Luigi Di Maio, of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement where, according to local media reports, they were expected to – paradoxically – discuss lowering the country’s growth forecast from 1.5% to 1.0-1.2%% in order to get a budget deal (it wasn’t immediately clear how expecting even slower growth would bolster their case).

However, while Salvini reportedly had a “positive” meeting with Conte on the budget, Di Maio reportedly skipped that meeting and, in a series of interviews given Monday and Sunday, the M5S leader appeared to dig in his heels, telling reporters at Montecitorio that giving up on the populist government’s fiscally stimulative agenda would be tantamount to economic “suicide” that would likely bring about a recession, according to Italian newswire ANSA.

“The only way to respect EU parameters is to make a suicidal budget law that would bring on a recession,” newswire Ansa cites Italy Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio as saying. Di Maio said he was agreeing with comments from Finance Minister Giovanni Tria.

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