diff --git a/dev-libs/icu/icu74-74.1.recipe b/dev-libs/icu/icu74-74.1.recipe
index 64d76e7f4..ce138b5da 100644
--- a/dev-libs/icu/icu74-74.1.recipe
+++ b/dev-libs/icu/icu74-74.1.recipe
@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ wrapping when displaying the text."
 HOMEPAGE="http://www.icu-project.org"
 COPYRIGHT="1995-2020 IBM Corporation and others."
 LICENSE="ICU"
-REVISION="5"
+REVISION="6"
 SOURCE_URI="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-${portVersion/\./-}/icu4c-${portVersion/\./_}-src.tgz"
 CHECKSUM_SHA256="86ce8e60681972e60e4dcb2490c697463fcec60dd400a5f9bffba26d0b52b8d0"
 SOURCE_URI_2="https://github.com/unicode-org/icu/releases/download/release-${portVersion/\./-}/icu4c-${portVersion/\./_}-data.zip#noarchive"
@@ -146,8 +146,8 @@ BUILD()
 	rm -f data/in/icudt??l.dat
 
 	# optimize & make symbol lookups faster (and prevent symbols being overridden)
-	export CCFLAGS=-fno-semantic-interposition
-	export CXXFLAGS=-fno-semantic-interposition
+	export CFLAGS="-O2 -fno-semantic-interposition"
+	export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -fno-semantic-interposition"
 	export LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions
 
 	autoconf
diff --git a/dev-libs/icu/icu75-75.1.recipe b/dev-libs/icu/icu75-75.1.recipe
index aacb2bdf9..9b0b59522 100644
--- a/dev-libs/icu/icu75-75.1.recipe
+++ b/dev-libs/icu/icu75-75.1.recipe
@@ -149,8 +149,8 @@ BUILD()
 	#cp ../../../sources-3/tzdata*.tar.gz tools/tzcode/
 
 	# optimize & make symbol lookups faster (and prevent symbols being overridden)
-	export CCFLAGS=-fno-semantic-interposition
-	export CXXFLAGS=-fno-semantic-interposition
+	export CFLAGS="-O2 -fno-semantic-interposition"
+	export CXXFLAGS="-O2 -fno-semantic-interposition"
 	export LDFLAGS=-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions
 
 	unzip -oq ../../../sources-2/icu4c-*-data.zip