European Currency Unit
The European Currency Unit (₠; ECU) was a basket of the currencies of the European Community member states, used as the unit of account of the European Community before being replaced by the euro. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism attempted to minimize fluctuations between member state currencies and the ECU. The ECU was also used in some international financial transactions.
The ECU was conceived on 13 March, 1979 as an internal accounting unit. It had the ISO 4217 currency code XEU.
On January 1 1999, the euro (with the code EUR) replaced the ECU, at the value EUR 1 = XEU 1. Unlike the ECU, the euro is a real currency, although not all member states participate (for details on Euro membership see Eurozone).
Until 1999, all member states that participated in the ERM, also participated in the ECU.
Due to the ECU being used in some international financial transactions, there was a concern that foreign courts might not recognize the euro as the legal successor to the ECU. This was unlikely to be a problem, since it is a generally accepted principle of private international law that states determine their currencies, and that therefore states would accept the European Union legislation to that effect. However, for abundant caution, several foreign jurisdictions adopted legislation to ensure a smooth transition. Of particular importance here were the U.S. states of Illinois and New York, under whose laws a large proportion of international financial contracts are made. Both these states passed legislation to ensure that the euro was recognized as successor to the ECU.
Although the acronym ECU is formed from English words, at the same time the word ecu was a reference to an ancient French coin of the same name. That was one (perhaps the main) reason that a new name was devised for its successor currency, euro, which was felt to not favour any single language.
The currency's symbol, ₠ (U+20A0), comprises an interlaced C and E, which are the initial letters of the phrase 'European Community' in many European languages. However, this symbol was not widely used: few systems at the time could render it and in any case banks preferred (as with all currencies) to use the ISO code XEU.
| Currency | 13.03.1979- 16.09.1984 |
17.09.1984- 21.09.1989 |
21.09.1989- 31.12.1999 |
|---|---|---|---|
| BEF | 9.64% | 8.57% | 8.183% |
| DEM | 32.98% | 32.08% | 31.955% |
| DKK | 3.06% | 2.69% | 2.653% |
| ESP | - | - | 4.138% |
| FRF | 19.83% | 19.06% | 20.316% |
| GBP | 13.34% | 14.98% | 12.452% |
| GRD | - | 1.31% | 0.437% |
| IEP | 1.15% | 1.20% | 1.086% |
| ITL | 9.49% | 9.98% | 7.840% |
| LUF | - | - | 0.322% |
| NLG | 10.51% | 10.13% | 9.98% |
| PTE | - | - | 0.695% |
The GBP wase included in the European Currency Unit before Black Wednesday (October 1992), but not afterwards.