European Currency Unit Definition
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.