BERLIN — Angela Merkel has a very limited menu of unappetizing options as she faces one of the worst crises in her 12 years as German chancellor.

And, in the course of Monday, the range of options seemed to get narrower still.

Merkel has no obvious way of forming a government after the collapse on Sunday night of exploratory talks on building a coalition between her Christian Democrats (CDU), Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU), the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the environmentalist Greens.

Here are four potential scenarios for Germany's weakened chancellor.

1. Minority government

Merkel could try to lead Germany without having a stable parliamentary majority, by forming a coalition between her conservative bloc and one small party — the Greens or the Free Democrats. The latter party seems an unlikely partner, however, after it pulled out of the talks on Sunday.

A minority government has never been tested at the national level in Germany for an entire term and would be far from ideal for the chancellor, forcing her to gather support from opposition MPs to pass laws.

Merkel has made no secret of her distaste for such an arrangement.

“I intend to come up with a stable government for Germany,” she said on election night back in September.

2. New election

The power to call a new election lies in the hands of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. But he indicated on Monday that he was extremely reluctant to use it.

"The task of forming a government remains. One can't simply give the responsibility back to the voters," Steinmeier said. "The parties should now pause once again and reflect on their positions."

However, if the parties cannot form a government, Steinmeier may have little choice but to start the process that would lead to a fresh general election. This would involve various attempts to elect a chancellor in the Bundestag, after which Steinmeier would be free to dissolve the parliament.

But even if there is a new election, the parties could well end up right back where they started — with each party holding roughly the same number of seats in parliament.

An Emnid poll published Sunday — before the talks collapsed — suggested that a four-way coalition of CDU, CSU, FDP and Greens or a "grand coalition" of CDU/CSU and SPD would remain the only viable governments after a new election.

For Merkel personally, such a re-run also poses an existential threat to her political career.

Her failure to clinch a coalition with the liberals and Greens is likely to further weaken her standing inside her own party. If Germans were to go to the polls once again, it is far from certain that the Christian Democrats — let alone their Bavarian sister party — would support the 63-year-old as their candidate for chancellor.

3. Grand coalition

This all depends on the country's second-largest party, the Social Democrats (SPD), who reiterated on Monday that they were not willing to reprise their role of the past four years as Merkel's junior coalition partners.

Having suffered their worst result in history in September's general election, the Social Democrats decided that going into opposition was the only way to rebuild.

The party's leadership voted unanimously on Monday to stick to that position and party leader Martin Schulz suggested a new election was the best way out of the crisis.

“We believe it is important that the citizens of our country … can re-evaluate the situation,” Schulz said: “We are not available … to enter into a grand coalition.”

However, the party will come under pressure to at least explore an alliance with Merkel — not least from President Steinmeier, a Social Democrat who served as foreign minister in the outgoing grand coalition government.

The FDP also suggested it was the SPD's turn to explore a coalition with Merkel.

"If it comes to a new election, the Social Democrats will be to blame," said Wolfgang Kubicki, deputy leader of the Free Democrats.

4. 'Jamaica' revival

Theoretically, after a bit of sleep and time to reflect, the four parties who failed to reach agreement on Sunday night could decide to try again.

But another attempt at this "Jamaica" coalition — so-called because the parties' colors match those of the Caribbean nation's flag — looks very unlikely at this stage.

The parties involved have already started pointing the finger of blame, mainly in the direction of the FDP.

"We were very close to an agreement ... until the FDP decided to leave the room," Greens party chief Cem Özdemir told a news conference Monday afternoon.