European Currency Unit opportunity for foreign diversification without reliance on the currency of a single country. The ECU was conceived on 13 March 1979 as an internal accounting unit. It had the ISO 4217 currency code XEU. On 1 January 1999, the euro (with the code EUR and symbol €) replaced the ECU, at the value €1 = 1 ECU. Unlike the ECU, the euro is a real currency, although not all member states participate (for details on euro membership see Eurozone). Two of the countries in the ECU basket of currencies, UK and Denmark, did not join the eurozone, and a third,
Currency symbol Currency symbol A currency symbol is a graphic symbol used as a shorthand for a currency's name, especially in reference to amounts of money. Although several former currency symbols were rendered obsolete by the adoption of the euro, having a new and unique currency symbol implementation of which requires the adoption of new Unicode and type formats has now become a status symbol for international currencies. The European Commission considers the global recognition of the euro sign part of its success. In 2009, India launched a public competition to replace the ₨ ligature it shared with neighbouring countries. It finalised