The number of .eu, .ею and .ευ domain names grew by 0.9% in 2021 to 3,713,804 according to EURid’s 2021 Annual Report released this week. It’s the highest total number of .eu domains since 2017 when there were 3,815,055 domains. But this 2017 figure was before the impact of Brexit and included 317,286 .eu domains registered to British registrants, the vast majority of whom became ineligible once Britain left the European Union.

As of 31 December, .eu was the eighth largest country code top-level domain (ccTLD) according to Verisign’s Domain Name Industry Brief for the fourth quarter of 2021 [pdf] behind .de (Germany), .cn (China), .uk (United Kingdom), .nl (Netherlands), .ru (Russia), .br (Brazil), and .fr (France).

In other statistics from EURid’s 2021 Annual Report [pdf], the country with the highest annual net increase was Portugal with 52% followed by Latvia (20%), Finland (9%), Ireland (8%) and Estonia (7%). Germany was the country with the highest number of .eu registrations (1,014,165), followed by the Netherlands (470,392), France (309,927), Italy (279,833) and Poland (227,160).

For EURid’s Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs), there were .eu, 1,254 registrations under the Cyrillic .ею, 2,655 under the Greek .ευ and 39,954 Latin .eu domain names, totalling 43,863 IDNs. For DNSSEC, the number of signed domain names reached its highest level ever across EURid’s TLDs, totalling 546,994.

Brexit’s impact on EURid continued in 2021, with over 81,000 Brexit-related domain names suspended. Other highlights were EURid was selected by the European Commission to continue as the .eu TLD’s registry manager through to October 2027, which will take EURid to 20 years as the .eu manager. 2021 also saw EURid join forces with the Global Cyber Alliance for the Domain Trust project, with the mutual goal of improving the security of the cyber ecosystem.

Other 2021 achievements included:

• .eu TLD celebrated its fifteenth year of providing a great service to great stakeholders and planted 1000 trees to contribute to a greener future.
• EURid`s public website achieved accessibility level AA: optimal compliance.
• Registration eligibility for .eu was extended to citizens of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway (European Economic Area)
• the .eu Academy worked on shaping the Digital Europe of tomorrow, with tailored webinars carried out in collaboration with Europol, EUIPO, the Dutch Government and Pisa University.
• EURid announced seven winners of the 2021 .eu Web Awards during a gala held in Taormina, Sicily.