Editing Franc (section)

==Belgian franc and Luxembourg franc==
{{main|Belgian franc|Luxembourg franc}}
The conquest of most of western Europe by Revolutionary and Napoleonic France led to the franc's wide circulation. Following independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the new Kingdom of Belgium in 1832 adopted its own Belgian franc, equivalent to the French one, followed by Luxembourg adopting the Luxembourgish franc in 1848 and Switzerland in 1850. Newly unified Italy adopted the [[Italian lira|lira]] on a similar basis in 1862.

In 1865, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy created the [[Latin Monetary Union]] (to be joined by Spain and Greece in 1868): each would possess a national currency unit (franc, lira, peseta, drachma) worth 4.5&nbsp;g of silver or {{val|0.290322|u=g}} of gold (fine), all freely exchangeable at a rate of 1:1. In the 1870s the gold value was made the fixed standard, a situation which was to continue until 1914.

In 1926, Belgium as well as France experienced depreciation and an abrupt collapse of confidence, leading to the introduction of a new gold currency for international transactions, the ''belga'' of 5 francs, and the country's withdrawal from the monetary union, which ceased to exist at the end of the year. The 1921 monetary union of Belgium and Luxembourg survived and formed the basis for full economic union in 1932.

Like the French franc, the Belgian and Luxembourg francs ceased to exist on 1 January 1999, when they became fixed at 1&nbsp;EUR = 40.3399&nbsp;BEF/LUF, thus a Belgian or Luxembourg franc was worth €0.024789. Old franc coins and notes lost their legal tender status on 28 February 2002.

One Luxembourg franc was equal to one Belgian franc. Belgian francs were legal tender inside Luxembourg, and Luxembourg francs were legal tender in the whole of Belgium. (In reality, Luxembourg francs were only accepted as means of payment by shops and businesses in the Belgian province of Luxembourg adjacent to the independent Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, this for historical reasons.)

The equivalent name of the Belgian franc in Dutch and German, Belgium's other official languages, was {{lang|nl|frank}}. As mentioned before, in Luxembourg the franc was called {{lang|lb|Frang}} (plural {{lang|lb|Frangen}}) in [[Luxembourgish]].