1 ECU - Paneuropean Union

The Paneuropa-Union, founded by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1923, was the earliest organized pan-European political movement and predated the EU's institutional ancestors by decades. This 1984 issue was struck as a private fantasy piece — the ECU was at that point a genuine European Currency Unit used in interbank settlement, but the Paneuropa-Union had no issuing authority whatsoever. Pieces like this occupy an awkward taxonomic category: neither medal nor legal tender, catalogued under Krause's X-numbers precisely because no other classification fits.