{"id":11227,"date":"2026-08-22T05:16:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T05:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/11227\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T05:16:53","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T05:16:53","slug":"luxembourg-country-profile-bbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/11227\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxembourg country profile &#8211; BBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Some key dates in the history of Luxembourg:<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1839 &#8211; Treaty of London gives the western part of the country to the recently-created state of Belgium &#8211; giving Luxembourg its modern-day borders. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1866 &#8211; Luxembourg crisis nearly sees war between France and Prussia as neither is willing to concede influence in Luxembourg to its rival. The crisis is solved by an agreement on Luxembourg&#8217;s independence and neutrality at the Second Treaty of London in 1867. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1914 &#8211; Outbreak of World War One. Luxembourg is occupied by Germany until 1918.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1920 &#8211; Luxembourg joins the League of Nations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1921 &#8211; Luxembourg enters economic union with Belgium. The use of the Belgian currency in Luxembourg is permitted. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1940-44 &#8211; Luxembourg is again occupied by Germany during World War Two.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1948 &#8211; Luxembourg abandons its neutrality and forms an economic union with Belgium and the Netherlands &#8211; the Benelux countries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1949 &#8211; Luxembourg joins Nato.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1957 &#8211; Luxembourg becomes founder member of the European Economic Community (now the European Union) which comes into effect in January 1958.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1964 &#8211; Grand Duchess Charlotte abdicates in favour of her son, who becomes Grand Duke Jean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">1992 &#8211; Luxembourg adopts the Maastricht Treaty creating the European Union.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2000 &#8211; Crown Prince Henri becomes Grand Duke of Luxembourg on the abdication of his father, Jean.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2002 &#8211; Euro introduced as national currency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2008 &#8211; Parliament approves reform restricting the monarch to a purely ceremonial role after Grand Duke Henri&#8217;s threat to block a bill legalising euthanasia sparks a constitutional crisis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2009 &#8211; G20 adds Luxembourg to &#8220;grey list&#8221; of countries with questionable banking arrangements. Shortly afterwards the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) commends Luxembourg for improving financial transparency with agreements with a dozen countries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2014 &#8211; Luxembourg&#8217;s parliament votes to legalise same-sex marriage. The so-called LuxLeaks scandal casts light on how Luxembourg helped hundreds of multi-national companies &#8211; Apple, Ikea, and Pepsi among them &#8211; save billions of dollars in tax payments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">2016 &#8211; In a continuation of the so-called LuxLeaks scandal, two former employees of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers are given suspended prison sentences for leaking confidential documents revealing corporate tax deals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some key dates in the history of Luxembourg: 1839 &#8211; Treaty of London gives the western part of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-11227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-luxembourg","tag-luxembourg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@lu\/117137469874628633","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/lu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}