For the sixth time since 1972, the Danes are preparing to vote on their attitude to an aspect of European integration. And, as usual, they have Brussels on tenterhooks. Polls late last week show the September 28th vote on participation in the euro on a knife edge with the surge in the Yes vote just passing out the No vote for the first time.
At the weekend in Evian the Danish Foreign Minister, Neils Helveg Peterssen, was telling those of his many EU counterparts who asked about the campaign that it would be tight but he felt that the positive momentum on the Yes side would be sufficient to carry the day.
The Prime Minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, has gambled that the boom in the Danish economy, halving unemployment, would inspire enough of the country's traditionally Euro-sceptical Social Democratic voters to back their government's stance.
But, despite backing from a substantial majority of members of the Folketing (Parliament), both the mainstream Liberal parties and the Conservatives, it's an uphill battle.
Yet, unlike the Maastricht vote in 1992, when the Danes not only rejected the treaty for themselves but put its implementation on hold for the whole Union, this time their vote is largely symbolic in significance.
For one thing, the euro is actually up and running and not dependent on the vote for its survival.
And the decision will make virtually no difference to the krone or Danish monetary policy. For years the Danes have pegged its value first to the deutschmark and then to the euro.
So their vote is not about whether or not to maintain an independent monetary policy - they don't have one - but about whether, by joining the euro formally, they want an influence on its performance. To remain outside is simply to forgo influence.
It is a point that Mr Rasmussen and his Finance Minister, Marianne Helveg, have been hammering home, to the embarrassment of the main opposition, the Socialist People's Party, for whom the pegging is uncontroversial.
In Brussels the vote is important because of the knock-on effect on similar polls in Sweden and particularly the UK, where a Danish No will play heavily in any campaign. There are also concerns that a No would sap the willingness of those facing referendums after the ongoing Inter-Governmental Conference to contemplate radical reforms.
From an Irish perspective one of the strange footnotes to the story is to be found in the central role in the No campaign of Fianna Fail's European Parliament partners, the far-right Euro-sceptical Danish People's Party, DPP.
It is led by the demagogic Pia Kjaersgaard, whom Austria's Jorg Haider refused to meet last month for fear of being tainted with her views. The DPP has made its name - and up to 15 per cent in the polls - with strident anti-immigrant propaganda and calls for the castration of paedophiles.
Its MEP, Mogens Camre, sits in the Union for Europe of the Nations group alongside Fianna Fail, Italy's once fascist Alleanza Nazionale, and France's Euro-sceptical Gaullists under Charles Pasqua.
Mr Camre set the campaign in Denmark alight with his unapologetic references to the euro as a Hitlerite project. Recalling Hitler's support for the idea of a single currency, he said "the technique is about combining power. Hitler wanted to combine power in his hands and the European Commission wants to combine power in its hands."
But the stridency of the DPP appears to have backfired and reports in the press suggest the party may be scrapping its advertising campaign for fear of alienating Social Democratic voters, most of whom who despise the DPP more than they fear the euro.
Asked at the weekend about Fianna Fail's view of its partner's campaign, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, made clear that "neither I nor the Fianna Fail party subscribe to such views."
Arguing that the UFEN grouping is largely a parliamentary marriage of convenience - although it did issue a common political declaration - Mr Cowen insisted that Fianna Fail "has been at the forefront of European integration since the beginning."
Strange bedfellows indeed.
