European Currency Unit different from European Unit of Account
The European Currency Unit (French: Unité de compte européenne, Spanish: Unidad Monetaria Europea, German: Europäische Währungseinheit ; ⟨₠⟩, ECU, or XEU) was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.As a unit of account, the ECU was not a circulating currency and did not replace or override the value of the currency of EEC member countries. However, it was used to price some international financial transactions and capital transfers.Hard ECU proposal
In 1990 the British Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major proposed the creation of a 'hard' ECU, which different national currencies could compete against and, if the ECU was successful, could lead to a single currency. The move was seen by France and Germany as a wrecking tactic, especially when the increasingly Eurosceptic Thatcher announced her outright opposition to European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and the idea was abandoned.Euro replaces the ECU
On 1 January 1999, the euro (with the code EUR and symbol ⟨€⟩) replaced the ECU at par (one-to-one). 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, Greece, joined late. On the other hand, Finland and Austria joined the eurozone from the beginning, even though their currencies were not part of the ECU basket, since they had joined the EU in 1995, two years after the ECU composition was "frozen".