Abstract
The experience acquired in Benelux has proved very useful in the formulation of subsequent integration plans. The present chapter gives an outline of the most important stages in this, the first experiment in Western European integration, followed by an appraisal.
… sie erlaubt den drei Ländern… auf solchen Gebieten tätig zu werden, die nicht oder noch nicht von der EWG erfasst werden.
Hans Möller
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Bibliography
All the Treaty texts, together with comments, subsequent conventions, ministerial decisions, etc., are incorporated in the loose-leaf work Union économique Benelux. Textes de base, published by Benelux Secretariat, supplements to which are issued at regular intervals.
Periodicals published by the Secretariat include Bulletin Benelux (since June 1957) — published up to March 1960 under the title of Bulletin Trimestriel (six issues per year) — and Bulletin Trimestriel de Statistique Benelux (since January 1954). There are also separate publications dealing in particular with wage policy and comparative budgets. See also Rapport Commun des Gouvernements belge, néerlandais et luxembourgeois au Conseil interparlementaire consultatif de Benelux sur la réalisation et le fonctionnement d'une Union économique entre les trois états (yearly). In English: the Benelux economic union. A pioneer in European integration (1987).
A good historical survey up to 1956 is found in J. E. Meade, Negotiations for Benelux: an annotated chronicle 1943–1956 (Princeton, Princeton University, 1957). A more systematic exposition is provided by J. E. Meade and S. J. Wells, “The building of Benelux 1943–1960”, in J. E. Meade, H. H. Liesner and S. J. Wells, Case studies in European economic union. The mechanism of integration (ed. J. E. Meade) (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962).
Note: the Belgium-Luxemburg Economic Union. The convention establishing an ‘economic union’ between Belgium and Luxemburg was signed on 25 July 1921 and came into force on 6 March 1922. Since 1921 the Treaty has been amended several times. The most important of these amendments relate to the control of foreign trade (1935), a new institutional structure, stressing mutual agreement instead of consultation (1963) and — in the same spirit — monetary association instead of consultation in the monetary field (1981).
See: M. A. G. van Meerhaeghe, The Belgium-Luxemburg Economic Union (SUERF, Tilburg, 1987).
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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van Meerhaeghe, M.A.G. (1992). Benelux. In: International Economic Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3576-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3576-4_7
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