BANKING IN NORTH-WESTERN EUROPE

Summary: The area of North-Western Europe encompasses France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. It is the region, which, due to its location in the heart of Europe and the level of economic and social development it has achieved, has dictated the course of Europe’s general development. With the exception of Luxembourg, which is too small to play a more prominent role, all the remaining countries used to be large capital exporters to other parts of Europe, especially to its southern and eastern regions. Thanks to the rapid industrialisation, these states already managed to acquire an important position in the European economic order in the second half of the 19th century. France and Germany were among European economic, military and political superpowers of utter importance to the European balance of powers. Although the rest of these states had less relative weight due to the smaller size of their economic space, it was still way beyond what one would expect for their size. The development of banking was diverse, but the common trait of all the selected countries is the fact that their banking began to develop at a relatively early time in the Middle Ages, at the same time as the European trade flows were developing. The centres that were formed then would maintain their leading role in the European context for the centuries to come including the 19th and the 20th century. In addition, the discussion of the Swiss banking system gives us the opportunity to present the institutionalisation of the instrument of banking secrecy. This is also the case because the Swiss banking system has become synonymous with the term of banking secrecy.