Brexit and the ax on .eu domains

Just one year after this declaration, on 28 March 2018, the European Union communicated to the United Kingdom that Brexit will also have consequences on .eu internet domains belonging to entities not located in the 27 Member Countries.

.eu domains: the register and registration rules The register of .eu domains following the nomination by the European Commission is Eurid and to register a domain with this extension you must respect some simple rules:

it can contain characters of the alphabet from a to z and numbers from 0 to 9

may contain the minus sign (-)

the length must be between 2 and 63 characters (without considering the .eu extension)

the domain holder must be: a company, organization or natural person with registered office or resident within the European Union, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein.

The ax on .eu domains: how many are affected? According to the European Union, the .eu domain registry (Eurid) has the duty to enforce the agreements made according to which the registration of a .eu domain, a clear expression of European identity, must be linked to a person, organization or company resident in one of the Member States plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. And it is precisely this rule that clashes with Brexit which defines the United Kingdom as a "third country", effectively losing the requirements for registering the .eu domain.

The .eu domains registered as of 2017 are approximately 3,815,055 of which over 300 thousand registered in the United Kingdom.

Brexit, causing these requirements to lapse, places around 317 thousand domains at risk of cancellation. Within one year, from when Brexit takes effect (deadline 29 March 2019), they will be made available for new registration. Precisely for this reason, starting from March 29th no user or company in the United Kingdom can register .eu domains and at the same time those who hold a domain can no longer renew it.

Companies across the Channel, which risk having the domain of their company or brand cancelled, will still be able to defend the registration by virtue of the rights acquired, thus avoiding disastrous scams or phishing attempts against the community.

Conclusions It's a shame that .eu domains end up in the history books! We at Host.it are committed in the coming months to extrapolating from our databases any affected customers, i.e. those who meet the criteria: private user or UK company and .eu domain. We will contact them to evaluate the best solution together in order to avoid having the domain canceled.