European Currency Unit European Currency Unit The European Currency Unit (₠ or 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 on 1 January 1999, at parity. The ECU itself replaced the European Unit of Account, also at parity, on 13 March 1979. 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, where its advantage was that securities denominated in ECUs provided investors with the
Euro two percent higher on the year, approximately at the same level as it was before the crisis kicked off in 2007. The formal titles of the currency are "euro" for the major unit and "cent" for the minor (one hundredth) unit and for official use in most eurozone languages; according to the ECB, all languages should use the same spelling for the nominative singular. This may contradict normal rules for word formation in some languages, e.g., those where there is no "eu" diphthong. Bulgaria has negotiated an exception; "euro" in the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is spelled as eвро ("evro") and