THE HAGUE – The Netherlands dealt an apparent deathblow to the European Union constitution yesterday, with 63% of the electorate rejecting the treaty, computer projections predicted.

Coming only three days after French voters rejected the constitution, the Dutch “no” vote was so decisive that the treaty seems to have no future in its current form.

The prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, said he was “disappointed” but called on other countries to continue with the ratification process.

An anti-immigration campaigner and the most prominent figure in the “no” camp, Geert Wilders, said: “I had not expected such a massive result. I am extremely happy with it.

“If you realize that two-thirds of parliament supported the constitution and two out of three people are against, it means a lot is wrong in the country.”

Alarmed E.U. leaders swiftly shifted their attention to Britain, issuing a thinly veiled warning to its government not to break ranks with other E.U. leaders, who have spent the past days insisting that all 25 member states must carry on putting the constitution to the vote, country by country, until the bitter end.

But Britain’s position has been hardening since the French vote. It now feels that it is not logical to hold a referendum before France has resolved the crisis set in motion by its voters’ emphatic non.

Sources said that either France must hold and win a second vote or it must admit that the constitution was dead, in which case Britain would not hold a referendum.

That focus on France – one of the four big beasts of E.U. politics with Britain, Germany, and Italy – has not been altered by the No vote in Holland, a much smaller nation. Asked to explain the size of the rejection, the Dutch interior minister and a member of the “yes” camp, Johan Remken, said: “Our people feel that Europe has gone too fast” – that it was “taking decisions about them without their consent.”

Watching the results on a giant screen in the media center attached to parliament in the Hague, a Calvinist Christian Union member of European Parliament, Hans Blokland, said he was proud of the voters.

“The people have given us our country back,” he said. “It is a better result than I had expected and the result is that the constitution is dead. We will now listen to what Mr. Blair has to say.”

Some senior officials at the European Commission in Brussels remain in denial about the crisis they face and have tried to portray the “no” vote in France as a “yes” to greater integration.

They noted that many French left-wing “no” voters had said they wanted more European harmonization and rejected the constitution as insufficiently socialist. The French result could be seen, in the eyes of federalist optimists, as a mandate for greater political union.

The Dutch vote makes a mockery of such wishful thinking. It is a Eurosceptic “no.”

As the crisis mounted, financial worries assailed the euro, which could become an “orphan currency” deprived of the backing of a political union such as the constitution would have provided.

It slid to eight-month lows against the dollar yesterday after a German magazine reported that leading officials had discussed the possible break-up of Europe’s monetary union at a secret meeting in Berlin. Fears that Germany is starting to lose confidence in the euro system sent fresh tremors through the markets, which were already alarmed by the rejection of the E.U. constitution by the French and the Dutch.

As Dutch citizens headed to the polling stations during the day, many complained that the European Union was threatening their identity as a small but proud nation of 16 million.

The Dutch, long seen as loyal “good Europeans,” have seized the opportunity to protest at everything from the adoption of the euro, which is blamed for rising prices, to the headlong pace at which the European Union is growing – from 12 to 25 countries in a decade – with the prospect, highly alarming to many voters, of Turkish entry on the horizon.

The focus now shifts to a long planned summit of E.U. heads of government and state in Brussels on June 16-17. That European Council will become a crisis summit as leaders debate what is to be done with the constitution.

Speaking before the Dutch result was known, the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, urged governments not to take any “unilateral initiatives” over the constitution crisis before the summit.

He appeared to be concerned by reports that the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, might offer a strong hint to Parliament next week that Britain was suspending plans for a referendum.

“It will not be wise before the [summit] for leaders to come with new initiatives or unilateral decisions that could make it more difficult to reach a consensus,” he said.