Dutch veer towards centre on eve of poll Dutch party candidates at TV channel for children Ever since the conservative Dutch government collapsed in the spring over EU-mandated budget cuts, observers have expected Wednesday's election to be decided by voters such as Cees Vinken. Mr Vinken, a retired printer, stood outside a church in the Dutch town of Haarlem on Sunday, explaining why he was "no great supporter of Europe." "All our social guarantees are gone, and that's partly because of Europe," said Mr Vinken, who has not yet decided which party to vote for. When I grew up in the 1950s, everything was arranged for you, but now you have to take care of everything yourself. The euro crisis and the unravelling of the Dutch welfare state have cracked open political faultlines on both the left and on the right. The far-right populist Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom have called to abandon the euro and leave the EU. On the left, the Socialist party, which voted against the Greek and Spanish bailouts and the eurozone rescue fund, climbed to the top of the polls in August. A Socialist win would have signalled that the anti-austerity, eurosceptic tide had reached the heart of Europe's prosperous north. Instead, the traditionally pro-European centre-left Labour party has staged a spectacular comeback, doubling its support in the polls. Its new leader, 41-year-old former Greenpeace campaigner Diederik Samsom, has delivered some aggressive debate performances and a well-executed advertising campaign. So are Dutch voters really retreating from anti-European extremes, or is the new strength of the pro-European centre just a fleeting bulge in the polls? In Amsterdam at a demonstration organised by the national labour union FNV, the potential for anti-EU resentment still seemed potent. Wild West-style posters denounced the budget cuts for creating a "social desert" and proclaimed: "Wanted: A Decent Job with Benefits." FNV members with laptops helped visitors work out how much they stood to lose under the proposed new taxes, which come atop higher healthcare expenses and weaker job protection laws. "Everything we've achieved in a hundred years of negotiations is being taken apart in two," said FNV organiser Arend Hamstra. Some of the protesters blamed Europe. "Those European commissioners make €28,000 a month and they want even more," said Frank Houtenbos, a steelworker at the Tata plant in Ijmuiden. In Greece a lot of people are just stuffing their pockets, too. But most, including the union organisers, took a pro-European line. Willem Noordman, a member of FNV's board of directors, said a "more social Europe" was the only way out of the economic crisis. Over the past three weeks, Mr Samsom has been decisively winning the battle with the eurosceptic left. Insisting on "eerlijkheid" - honesty and fairness - he has successfully attacked Liberal prime minister Mark Rutte for failing to level with voters on the costs of rescuing Europe, as well as for laying the burden of austerity measures too heavily on low-income Dutch. The split over Europe on the left is mirrored on the right. While Mr Wilders rails against "bloodsuckers" in Brussels, the powerful national business federation VNO-NCW has spent large sums on pro-European advertisements - the first time the conservative organisation has mounted a campaign to influence an election. The split between pro-European business interests and anti-Brussels or anti-Greek popular sentiment has caught the Liberals in a dilemma. So, like Labour, they have spent the campaign emphasising the economic programmes that divide right from left, rather than European standpoints that divide the centre from the extremes. As a result, a campaign expected to produce a strong verdict on the European project will instead probably turn mainly on domestic economic concerns, producing a centrist coalition that is pro-European by default rather than by conviction. For Ans Rijnsburger, a Liberal activist, the Dutch return to the centre reflects not so much renewed enthusiasm for Europe as a sense of resigned exhaustion. "Once the government is formed, it will have to compromise anyway," Ms Rijnsburger said.