1 ECU - Bergerac

Bergerac's merchant association issued this piece in 1993 as part of the brief wave of local trade tokens that swept through French towns following the 1992 Maastricht Treaty — a quiet commercial protest, or at minimum a nostalgic gesture, against the approaching single currency. The ECU denomination was deliberately ironic: the European Currency Unit was itself named after the medieval French écu, so these civic issues were simultaneously invoking local identity and the supranational framework threatening to erase it.

The Dordogne region's merchant-backed pieces from this period were privately minted and saw genuine if limited local circulation among participating shops.