History of the Netherlands The post-war years saw rapid economic recovery (helped by the American Marshall Plan), followed by the introduction of a welfare state during an era of peace and prosperity. The Netherlands formed a new economic alliance with Belgium and Luxembourg, the Benelux, and all three became founding members of the European Union and NATO. In recent decades, the Dutch economy has been closely linked to that of Germany, and is highly prosperous. The four countries adopted the Euro on 1 January 2002, along with eight other EU member states. The prehistory of the area that is now the Netherlands was largely
Radio Luxembourg service. RTL Group, Radio Luxembourg's parent company, was an initial minority shareholder in the UK's Channel Five terrestrial analogue television channel, launched in 1997. RTL became the majority shareholder from 2006, when it had been re-branded as "Five". It was one of more than fifty television stations that RTL owned throughout Europe. Unlike RTL's television stations in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, most of which are explicitly branded as RTL, Five did not significantly acknowledge its Luxembourg heritage on-air. RTL sold Five to Richard Desmond on 23 July 2010. Radio Luxembourg was also broadcast on RTL's various European TV channels