discussions broke off unsuccessfully, but both countries nevertheless made an attempt to conform their currencies to the LMU standard. Austria-Hungary refused to join the LMU because it rejected bimetallism, but signed a separate monetary treaty with France on December 24, 1867 whereby both states agreed to receive into their treasuries one another's gold coins at specified rates. Austria-Hungary thereafter minted some but not all of its gold coins on the LMU standard, including the 4 and 8 florin, which matched the specifications of the French 10 and 20 francs. Other states later adopted the system without formally joining the treaty: The colonies of France (including Algeria) came under the scope of the treaty in 1865; Peru adopted the franc system by law on July 31, 1863; Colombia and Venezuela followed in 1871; the Grand Duchy of Finland adopted the system on August 9, 1877; Serbia on November 11, 1878; and Bulgaria on May 17, 1880. In 1904, the Danish West Indies were also placed on this standard but did not join the Union itself. When Albania emerged from the Ottoman Empire as an independent nation in 1912, coins of the Latin Monetary Union from France, Italy, Greece, and Austria-Hungary began to circulate in place of the Ottoman Lira. Albania did not however mint its own coins, or issue its own paper money until it adopted an independent monetary system in 1925. With the tacit agreement of Napoleon III of France, Giacomo Antonelli, the administrator of the Papal Treasury, embarked from 1866 on an ambitious increase in silver coinage without the prescribed amount of precious metal, equivalent to Belgium's total. The papal coins quickly became debased and excessively circulated in other union states, to the profit of the Holy See, but Swiss and French banks rejected papal coins and the Papal States were ejected from the Union in 1870, owing 20 million lire. Issues Bimetalism failure From the beginning, fluctuations in the relative value of gold and silver on the world market stressed the currency union. This is today recognized as an inevitable effect of a currency based on bimetalism when precious metal prices fluctuate. When the LMU was formed in 1865, silver was nearing the end of a period of high valuation compared to gold. In 1873 the value of silver dropped significantly, followed by a sharp increase in silver imports in the LMU countries, particularly in France and Belgium.