ABSTRACT
The three small countries of north-west Europe – Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – have been pioneers of European economic integration. Belgium and Luxembourg have shared the same money and tariffs since the 1920s. Even before the Second World War had ended, these two countries, together with the Netherlands, launched plans for the Benelux customs union, though this arrangement only came fully into force in the late 1950s. By then all three had become founder-members of the European Union (then the European Communities), and they have remained to this day the most ‘European’ of its members. Brussels, the Belgian and European capital, has become both shorthand and scapegoat for EU decisions and bureaucracy.
