Dutch Voters May Point Way for Rest of Europe AMSTERDAM - The Netherlands is an unusually good European weather vane. It may be comparatively tiny, with only 16.7 million people, and comparatively rich and secure, but it forecasts where the Continent is headed. Two years ago, its elections were dominated by national angst over Islam and immigration, setting the tone for passionate debate throughout Western Europe. Now, as the Dutch go back to the polls on Wednesday, for the fifth time in 10 years, they are debating the crisis in the euro zone, from debt limits and loans to Greece to larger anxieties about potential political and fiscal union and its impact on national sovereignty. At heart, "the election is about what we do with our money," said Anna Kleene, 32, a management consultant who works at Amsterdam's World Trade Center. We have an economic crisis, and we ask whether we should spend it at home or for Greece and Italy, and it's hard for people to decide. It feels like if we're committed to the rules of Europe, why shouldn't others be? No one expects a political earthquake once the inevitable Dutch coalition government eventually emerges from the election. But the debate here is being watched carefully as an indicator of the more important German political campaign to come next year, with the same competing issues of European solidarity, national self-interest and fatigue with subsidizing weaker, less competitive southern countries likely to dominate. Many people living in the Netherlands and other rich northern countries, with their good credit ratings, feel aggrieved and put-upon despite their success, and the xenophobia that was previously directed at Muslims, said Paul Nieuwenburg of Leiden Univeristy, is now focused on Greeks, Spaniards and Italians. "The Dutch now speak of "those Greeks" the way they once spoke of "those Germans" in the past," Mr. Nieuwenburg said. "Euroskepticism is rising, and there is a sense of "We pay our taxes and they do not," that the southern countries are being parasitical on us." The Dutch can seem melancholy and sedate, but there is a fierce minority frightened by the insecurity of globalization. It is a country where some people pedal placidly along the canals, using umbrella hats to fend off the rain, while others ride their bicycles as aggressively as Germans drive on the autobahn. José Antonio Roodhof, 29, who works in real estate, said that "people look into their wallets, and they are more empty" these days. "Recession brings bigger problems to the fore than immigration," he said, and far-right voters are "just kicking out - first at Islam, and now at Europe." Mr. Roodhof favors solidarity with the European Union, but then adds quickly: "Not at all costs with the southern European countries. Greece is a big problem. Many Dutch voters understand that their small trading nation benefits hugely from the euro zone and the common currency, as export-driven Germany does. But more and more of them are drifting away from traditional Dutch parties, driven to more extreme positions by a heated campaign where the center seems to shrink. Normally, said Ms. Kleene, the management consultant, she would vote for the moderately right-leaning, more market-oriented party, the VVD, led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte. "But I don't feel very well represented," she said. Mr. Roodhof echoed that thought: "For the first time I'm undecided." They are typical of the roughly 40 percent of the 12.5 million voters who say they are still not sure of their vote. Mr. Rutte, 45, has managed to survive his dalliance with the far-right politician Geert Wilders, who drove the anti-Islam debate and is now driving the European one. Mr. Wilders, 49, had agreed to support the Rutte government in Parliament, but brought it down in April when he refused to support budget cuts to take the deficit down to 3 percent of the nation's gross domestic product for 2013, as Brussels demands. Mr. Wilders's Freedom Party, known by its initials, PVV, is the only explicitly anti-European one, arguing for the country to leave not just the euro, but the larger European Union as well, and become like Norway or Switzerland.