British .eu registrants have been given a final reminder that unless they update their registration details to an eligible address by 30 June 2021, their domain names will be “withdrawn” on 1 July 2021. The only exception is for those .eu registrants within the UK who are citizens of the European Union or the wider European Economic Area.
The European Union’s top-level domain .eu turned 15 this week, celebrating entering adolescence Wednesday.
On 1 January 2021 over 81,000 British-based .eu registrants found their domain names had become “suspended”, meaning their domain names would not resolve to websites and emails would not transmit. The reason was that at the end of the Brexit “transition period” on 31 December, they were ineligible to hold or register .eu domains. To comply, individuals had to prove they were a citizen of the European Union or the larger European Economic Area, an EU citizen no matter where they lived in the world or for businesses, be a legally established entity in the EU or EEA.
Not many top-level domain registries publish surveys on how their domain names are being used, but EURid this week did with some interesting findings, like just over half (51.84%) of the 150,000 .eu domain names survey have websites with rich content, 81% of domains with MX records are active and 82.5% are connected to a web server.
Security on the web is crucial when building a European initiative for a Human Internet that respects key values such as privacy, participation and diversity. With that in mind, EURid, the .eu registry, is hosting a virtual roundtable on 3 February to discuss the security framework that is needed for the Next Generation Internet.
The “vile” and “odious” Leave.EU appears to have had their domain name suspended, temporarily at least, following the pro-Brexit campaign group having transferred registration of their domain name to an Irish businessperson who denies any involvement in Leave.EU.
The move by the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU to change their domain name contact details to an Irish address has been met with condemnation by an Irish politician who has described the group as an “odious organisation … with a dubious reputation”.
With Britons and British companies no longer eligible to hold .eu domain names following Brexit, the Leave campaign have shown what hypocrites they are by updating the contact details for their domain name, Leave.eu, to an Irish address, in order to keep it.
Brexit impacted all manner of life in Britain when the country left the European Union on 1 February 2020, and this included .eu domain names. As of 1 January Britons are ineligible to hold .eu domain names after the “Transition Period” came to an end on 31 December.
EURid’s 2020 .eu Web Awards drew to a close Wednesday night with a spectacular video-streamed gala from the Teatro Verdi in Pisa, Italy.