73,000 .eu domain names .euthanyzed
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But what is their fault to deserve a suspension from the registry operator EURid, which manages over 3.5 million domain names ending in .eu and .ευ (in Greek alphabet)? The answer is quite simple: these domain names have been registered by persons or entities based in Great Britain, a country which, since January 1st, is no longer a part of the European Union. EURid said that at the start of the year, over 81,000 domain names with the country codes GB/GI (Great Britain/Gibraltar) were put in “suspension”. To date, some 8,000 of those domain names have been restored after their owners were able to demonstrate compliance with the .eu regulatory framework, i.e. gain a physical address in the European Economic Area (the 27 Member States of the EU, plus the members of the European Free Trade Association: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland). EURid initially set the compliance deadline at March 31, later pushing it back to July 1st. On January 1st, 2022, non-compliant domain names will be deleted from the registry and will be up for grabs. In 2018, British entities owned 317,000 .eu domain names, or just 1% of the 31.5 million .eu names. At Brexit time, many owners did not renew their registration, leaving just 81,000 British-owned .eu domains post-Brexit. Ironically, Leave.EU, the powerful political lobbying group that supported the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in the June 2016 referendum, saw its .eu domain name suspended in the operation: its site is no longer accessible. Brexit had some h.euristic consequences!
⇨ The Register, Kieren McCarthy, “British owners of .eu domains given an extra three months to find a European address.”
2021-02-11
