Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union The Belgium–Luxembourg Economic Union (, , ), abbreviated to BLEU or UEBL, is an economic union between Belgium and Luxembourg, two countries in the Benelux Union. BLEU was created by a treaty, signed on 25 July 1921, despite a referendum against such a proposal, between Belgium and Luxembourg, and came into effect upon ratification by the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies on 22 December 1922. Under the terms of the treaty, the economic frontier was lifted and the Belgian franc and Luxembourg franc were set at a fixed parity (though revised in 1935 and 1944) establishing a monetary
Habsburg Netherlands on. In 1581, the Seven United Provinces seceded to form the Dutch Republic; the remaining Spanish Southern Netherlands eventually passed on to Habsburg Austria. Finally, the Austrian Netherlands were annexed by the French First Republic in 1795, becoming the French client state of the Batavian Republic. The Habsburg Netherlands was a geo-political entity covering the whole of the Low Countries (i.e. the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and French Nord-Pas-de-Calais) from 1482 to 1581. Already under the rule of the Burgundian duke Philip the Good (1419–1467), the provinces of the Netherlands began to grow together: Flanders, Artois and Mechelen, Namur, Holland,