Dictionary of Banking Terms: European Currency Unit (ECU)
European Currency Unit (ECU)
monetary unit of the european community from 1979 until the introduction of the euro in January 1999. The ECU, a basket currency, was made up from predetermined amounts of all the EC countries except the Spanish peseta and the Portuguese escudo. Its principal application was ECU-denominated securities. When the Euro became Europe's common currency, the ECU ceased to exist as a monetary unit; the initial value of the Euro was set to ensure one-to-one equivalence between the ECU and the Euro.
