The 'Euro Currency Sign' preceded the Euro and was used to indicate the virtual European Currency Unit that was used in conversion rate calculations within the EU prior to the introduction of the Euro. When the latter was introduced with its official symbol, Unicode decided to give it a new codepoint rather than reusing the one that had been assigned to the virtual currency unit, to avoid possible confusion when dealing with older documents. The Euro Currency Sign character is effectively deprecated, since it is no longer in any regular use.

Son of Sputnik!

hhp

Thanks a lot, John!