EURid, the Registry responsible for running the .EU Top Level Domain (TLD), recently posted a publication to celebrate its 19th anniversary and highlight its achievements.
EURid was incorporated under Belgian law in April 2003 and, shortly thereafter, was appointed by the European Commission to run the .EU domain name Registry following a tender process. The Sunrise Period for .EU opened in December 2005, followed by the Landrush Period on 7 April 2006, when some one million .EU registrations were recorded on that day alone.
Throughout its nearly 20 years of existence, .EU has been promoted by EURid as the domain name extension of choice for European citizens, businesses and institutions. Anyone can register any .EU domain name as long as they are a citizen or resident of (or an organisation established in) a European Union Member State, Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Norway. There are currently approximately 3.7 million .EU registered domain names, with registrants based in Germany, the Netherlands and France in the lead.
EURid sees “security and trust” as central elements of .EU. Important initiatives include the Abuse Prevention and Early Warning System (APEWS), launched in 2019, which was designed to identify and block domain names that can potentially be used in an abusive manner. If the APEWS identifies a domain name as being potentially linked to abuse, it is immediately suspended and its status shows as “Server Hold”, meaning that any service connected to it, such as a website or email, will not function. The registrant of the domain name then needs to verify the registration data in order for the domain name to be reactivated. EURid believes that APEWS as well as DNSSEC and its Lock Services have increased the security of .EU and in turn “strengthened user confidence”. EURid also continues to collaborate with institutions such as Europol and EUIPO (the EU Intellectual Property Office) in order to combat cybercrime and protect intellectual property online.
EURid has also made “inclusivity” a priority and, since 2021, this has resulted in citizens of the EU / the EEA (European Economic Area) being able to register a .EU domain name regardless of their place of residence. Indeed when .EU first launched, the eligibility requirement for individuals was based on their address, which prevented European individuals living outside of the EU/ the EEA from registering domain names under .EU. In addition, EURid has supported linguistic and cultural diversity by managing and promoting the Cyrillic (.ею) and Greek (.ευ) extensions. This enables the relevant users to register domain names in their native script and, for EURid, this is “an important step towards a more inclusive and multilingual internet”.
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