ECTS stands for European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System and is the common grading system used to exchange grades between EU countries.
The ECTS system assumes that 60 ECTS credits are equal to the workload of a full-time university student during 1 academic year. This means that 1 ECTS credit is 25-30 study hours.
The ECTS credits system is good for students wanting to study abroad as they can easily transfer their grades between EU countries, even if the national grading systems in their countries are different. It’s also a good system for Universities as they can easily assess and compare student’s scores.
Here’s a table that shows how ECTS grades compare to the German grading system: