Word: benelux
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With few exceptions, the European Coal and Steel Community has proved a huge success. In eight years, steel production in its six member countries (France, Germany, Italy, Benelux) has jumped 100%, to 73 million tons in 1960-nearly equal the U.S. output. The organization has largely eliminated the national taxes on coal and steel production, applied international through rates on coal and steel shipments. It has developed the most advanced social and job-security system in the world for its 1,500,000 workers, who have free movement to jobs anywhere within the six countries, full salary unemployment benefits...
Ever since Britain diffidently began knocking at the door, the six nations of Europe's booming Common Market have found themselves at slight odds. Eager to have Britain in to offset French-German hegemony in the market, the three Benelux nations have tried to slow the pace of togetherness. France's Charles de Gaulle, who dreams of using the Common Market to Gallicize Europe, has tried to force the pace to discourage Britain. A "political" summit meeting of the heads of state of the Six, scheduled last spring, was called off because of all the intramural squabbling...
...prosperity; in fact, as Germany's only diesel-engined car, the Mercedes is favored by cab owners purely for economy. On West Berlin's city council, Adenauer's Christian Democrats are not "the opposition." as Gunther reports, but in coalition with Willy Brandt's Socialists. Benelux currencies are no more or less "interchangeable" than the rest of Europe's money. Another irritation is Gunther's constant trick of prefacing the obvious with the phrase "as everybody knows," or worse, "as is well known...
...internal tariff reductions in a year, the European Economic Community's six members made their scheduled first move toward building a common tariff wall against the rest of the world. France and Italy, both high-tariff countries, lowered their duties the first agreed notch, Germany and the Benelux countries raised theirs a bit. By 1966 the Community, more familiarly known as the Common Market, should be fully operative. Then Italian Fiats and German Volkswagens, for instance, will be able to enter France duty-free, but the tariff on U.S. and British cars will remain a stiff...
...Common Market's plans to lower its internal tariff walls while raising barriers against other traders. A plan before the Common Market already proposes to chop internal tariffs 20% in July instead of the planned 10%; at the same time, external tariffs in West Germany and the Benelux countries, with which Britain does $850 million worth of trade annually, will rise sharply. Macmillan's fear was that the move would only widen the gap between the Common Market and the Outer Seven, divide Europe into two economic camps and, eventually, two backbiting political camps...