100 Francs / 15 Ecus Charlemagne

Issued as part of France's bimetallic commemorative program that ran alongside the broader European ECU coinage initiative, this piece was struck the same year the Schengen Convention came into force — a pointed choice for a coin invoking Charlemagne, whose Frankish empire is routinely cited by European federalists as the original blueprint for continental unity. The dual denomination reflects the ECU's status at the time: a real unit of account used in EC financial transactions, not merely a token.

Charlemagne's monetary reform of 793–794 AD, which standardized the silver denier across his empire, is the historical anchor the Monnaie de Paris was clearly referencing.