The European Unit of Account (EUA) was a

unit of account In economics, unit of account is one of the functions of money. A unit of account is a standard numerical monetary unit of measurement of the market value of goods, services, and other transactions. Also known as a "measure" or "standard" of ...

most notably used in the

European Communities The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of Institutions of the European Union, institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Co ...

from 1975 to 1979, when it was replaced at parity by the

European Currency Unit The European Currency Unit (, , ; ⟨⟩, 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& ...

(ECU), in turn replaced at parity in 1999 by the

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

History

The EUA was introduced as the internal unit of account for the European Payments Union when that organisation was formed in 1950. The EUA was defined as 0.888671 grams of gold, or one US dollar. The unit was first used outside the EPU in 1961, when Kredietbank Luxembourgeoise issued a bond denominated in EUA. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the EUA was redefined as a basket of European currencies. The EUA was used for

Lomé Convention The Lomé Convention is a trade and aid agreement between the European Economic Community, European Economic Community (EEC) and 71 ACP countries, African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries, first signed in February 1975 in Lomé, Togo. His ...

and

European Investment Bank The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union's investment bank and is owned by the 27 member states. It is the largest multilateral financial institution in the world. The EIB finances and invests both through equity and debt sol ...

operations before being gradually introduced into other sectors of Community activity. The EUA basket was designed to have the same value in mid-1974 as the IMF

special drawing rights Special drawing rights (SDRs, code ) are supplementary foreign exchange reserve assets defined and maintained by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). SDRs are units of account for the IMF, and not a currency ''per se''. They represent a claim ...

basket, both worth US$1.20635; they immediately moved apart in value. Different units of account had previously been used for different purposes, including the budget, the

European Coal and Steel Community The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a European organization created after World War II to integrate Europe's coal and steel industries into a single common market based on the principle of supranationalism which would be governe ...

, and the Common Agriculture PolicyThe Units of Account as a Factor of Integration
CEC 87/75 following the abandonment of the gold parity unit of account in the early 1970s in the wake of the collapse of the

Bretton Woods system The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, including the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement until the ...

.European Union Public Finance
European Commission, , published 2008, accessed 2019-05-28

Bond market baskets of currencies

Various European

currency basket A currency basket is a portfolio of selected currencies with different weightings. A currency basket is commonly used by investors to minimize the risk of currency fluctuations and also governments when setting the market value of a country's ...

s were used as units of account in international

bond market The bond market (also debt market or credit market) is a financial market in which participants can issue new debt, known as the primary market, or buy and sell debt security (finance), securities, known as the secondary market. This is usually in ...

s. Some of these were defined in

ISO 4217 ISO 4217 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines alpha codes and numeric codes for the representation of currencies and provides information about the relationships between individ ...

References

{{Euro topics 1975 introductions Currencies of Europe