NETHERLANDS: At 11am today, a short convoy will leave Venlo, a little town near the Netherlands' border with Germany and the birthplace of Geert Wilders, darling of the Dutch populist right.
A bus and two armoured cars will carry Mr Wilders and his supporters across the Netherlands for the next two weeks as they campaign for a No vote in the June 1st referendum on the EU constitution.
Mr Wilders, who faces death threats from Islamic militants because of his harsh anti-Muslim statements, will be in one of the armoured cars.
The right-winger is determined to get across to voters his message that voting No to the constitution is the best way to prevent Turkey from joining the EU and to stem the tide of multiculturalism he identifies as the greatest threat facing his country.
Mr Wilders's claims will not go unchallenged, however, because as he leaves Venlo this morning, he will be followed by the tiny blue caravan of the Young Democrats, a liberal youth group campaigning for a Yes vote.
"It's an old wreck that cost €200 but anywhere he goes, we will be. If we are both on the streets, people will be able to compare opinions," said Bart Woord, a 21-year-old international relations student and the Young Democrats' vice-president.
The young Yes campaigners will hand out energy drinks along with their leaflets and will offer a 10-minute crash course in the constitution to anyone interested.
Opinion polls show a growing majority against the EU treaty in the Netherlands, which holds its referendum just three days after France votes next week.
Sophie in't Veld, an MEP from the liberal D66 party, fears it may now be too late for the Yes campaign to win.
"Of course we still have two weeks to go and anything can happen but I'm not terribly optimistic," she said.
"The political climate and the public debate in the Netherlands have been so poisoned over the last couple of years that I find it difficult to imagine there will be a sudden change of mood and people will all of a sudden massively vote Yes."
Dutch political life has been in turmoil since late 2001, when Pim Fortuyn, a sociology professor turned media pundit, emerged as leader of a new populist movement.
He claimed Muslim immigrants were a threat to Dutch liberal values and campaigned for public service reform and a massive cut in civil servant numbers.
Mr Fortuyn was assassinated by an animal rights campaigner in May 2002 but his LPF party won the second-largest number of seats in the election that followed a week later.
After a brief, unhappy spell in government, the LPF saw its popularity slump as the populist baton was passed to Mr Wilders, a former member of the right-wing liberal VVF.
"There is the general political climate which is very negative. It's against immigrants, it's against government, it's against Europe as well," said Ms in't Veld.
"It's against bad weather. It's not totally rational and of course it's being exploited by all sorts of people who feel that they stand to gain in electoral terms or otherwise."
Among the beneficiaries of the new volatility on the Dutch political scene is the Socialist Party, an ex-Maoist group that now commands about 6.7 per cent of the popular vote. Socialist party activists have been the busiest campaigners on either side of the Dutch referendum campaign, and their posters urging a No vote are everywhere.
One shows a map of Europe from which the Netherlands has disappeared, warning voters to be careful of what they vote for. Hans van Hejningen, a Socialist Party campaign strategist, admits to feeling uncomfortable being on the same side as right-wingers such as Mr Wilders.
"If we talk about being identified with right-wing people, that's not my biggest pleasure. If we talk about the social sector of the Dutch population which has a kind of anti-establishment attitude, it doesn't bother me too much that right-wing people are also fishing in that pool. We do it in a different way," he said.
He believes that between 20 and 30 per cent of the Dutch population, including a large part of the traditional working class, no longer has faith in mainstream politics, whether in The Hague or in Brussels.
"We have always had a kind of stability which is kind of unique in the world. I think the influx of migrant people, the disappearance of whole industrial sectors, the international situation mean that nowadays nearly every Dutch citizen thinks that the future will be less easy for their children than their lives now. So there's a kind of general pessimism," he said.
He says he is surprised by how well the No campaign is faring in the polls and by how weak the Yes campaign has been until now.
"The Yes campaign doesn't have a strong story . . . There's nobody telling you this is an excellent constitution."
Ms in't Veld traces the Yes campaign's problems back to the 1990s, when the Netherlands became major contributors to the EU budget. Conservative politicians, including current finance minister Gerrit Zalm, missed few opportunities to bash Brussels and complain about waste and mismanagement in the EU.
"People aren't stupid. They got the negative message for the past 15 years so it's not very credible that these parties now turn around and actively campaign for Europe," she said.
The Dutch referendum, the first in the country's history, is not binding on the parliament but the governing parties have said they will respect the result if the turnout is higher than 30 per cent.
Ms in't Veld believes the parliament will respect the referendum result regardless of turnout but she warns that if France votes Yes next week and the Netherlands votes No, the Dutch will face a serious political problem.
"In contrast to what most people in the Netherlands believe, I think we will find ourselves in isolation. Either we will get some kind of special status or special solution or we will have a new referendum, which would not be very good either."
For Bart Woord and his friends in the Young Democrats, the outcome of the referendum is less important than the quality of the debate it generates.
"There is a risk but democracy is not for people who are afraid. Maybe it would be better to have a No vote with a real discussion rather than a narrow Yes vote with no popular engagement."