Right, the ECU was the predecessor of the euro, so to say, created in 1979 and replaced by the EUR in 1999. In that system, the national currencies had "semi-fixed" exchange rates, much like what we have with ERM-II (Euro, Danish krone, Estonian kroon, etc.) now.
The "external value" of the euro on 1-Jan-1999 was exactly the same as that of the ECU the day before, ie. that changeover had no effect on ECU based contracts or purchases. Some countries that were in the old currency system, however, were not in the new one, and vice versa. So the internal "weight" and "value" of each national currency involved had to be adapted. But not quite that dramatically ;-) : The ECU-Gulden central rate in March 1998, for example, was about 1:2.23 while the EUR-NLG rate is about 1:2.20 ...
Actually, a few (very few!) ECU coins were legal tender in the issuing country. The Belgian issues, for example, were. Don't know, though, how many Belgians used those coins to buy, say, milk or fruit at supermarkets.
Christian
