Word: benelux
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Beginning Jan. 2, the governments of West Germany, France, the Benelux nations and Denmark will start taking steps to ensure that their currencies move up or down, more or less, in unison. In addition, the members created a new form of money, the European Currency Unit, or ecu. For now, at least, the ecu will not be paper money used by the man in the strasse to pay his bills, but simply a bookkeeping device for Europe's central banks to settle debts with each other...
...convinced that within a year or two his latest moves will reduce France's inflation to that of its more successful neighbors. He notes that countries without controls generally have more stable prices-for example, Germany with a rate of 2.7% and Switzerland with 1.7%. Austria, the Benelux countries and even Britain have also done better than France lately. Although designed to keep prices down, controls actually lift them by eliminating competition, in effect turning all industries into cartels. Discount stores are far scarcer in France than in West Germany or the U.S. Since businessmen know that the government...
...order to stimulate exports at the expense of Britain's trading partners-a charge that British Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey denied. Fourcade also made a last-ditch attempt to keep the franc in the so-called European snake -an arrangement that bound France, West Germany, the Benelux countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark to hold their currencies within a 4.5% range of fluctuation against each other. Fourcade proposed that the permitted variation be widened slightly, allowing the franc to drift gently down and the mark and Dutch guilder to bob up a bit. West Germany agreed...
...snake-so named because of the way its currencies wiggle together against outsiders' money -includes the Benelux and Scandinavian countries along with West Germany. France, a charter member when the snake was formed in 1972, dropped out early last year...
Well Aware. In answer, pro-EEC British economists argue that participation in the Common Market cushions all its members against radical hikes in the price of staples. They point out that inflation last year in food prices was lower in France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux nations than it was in Japan, the U.S. or Britain. British prices would have been even lower, they say, had the United Kingdom been entitled to the full protection guaranteed by membership that it will gain...