History of the euro succeeding the EMCF, under Maastricht. It was created as the forerunner to the European Central Bank. It met for the first time on 12 January under its first president, Alexandre Lamfalussy. After much disagreement, in December 1995 the name "euro" was adopted for the new currency (replacing the name "Ecu" used for the previous accounting currency), on the suggestion of then-German finance minister Theo Waigel. They also agreed on the date 1 January 1999 for its launch. On 17 June 1997 the European Council decided in Amsterdam to adopt the Stability and Growth Pact, designed to ensure budgetary discipline after
Euro Currency Index was 34.38805726 multiplied by the product of all components in the basket of currencies, that have been raised to a high number of their percentage, weighting equal to: ECX = 34.38805726 x (EURUSD^(0.3155) x EURGBP^(0.3056) x EURJPY^(0.1891) x EURCHF^(0.1113) x EURSEK^(0.0785)) The all-time low was constructed on 6 July 2001, with 83.36 points and the all-time high on July 14, 2008, 123.82 points. On 20 May 2011, the exchange ICE Futures U.S. ended the trading of futures and options on the index. On July 28, 2011, the calculation of the ICE Euro Currency Index was discontinued (last value was 108.88