From 11.00 hrs Friday, anyone with a residence in the European Union may apply to register a name under the .eu Top Level Domain, on a first-come, first-served basis. Nationality of an EU Member State is not a prerequisite.
It also sees the close of the “sunrise” period, during which 320,000 .eu domain applications were filed by trademark holders, public bodies and holders of other prior rights such as unregistered trade marks, business identifiers or copyrights.
EU institutions and officials will all switch to “.eu” names, en masse, on May 9, Europe Day.
“Today, Europe’s competitive knowledge society becomes very visible to the world on the internet,” commented Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding.
“Europe and its citizens can now project their own web identity, protected by EU rules. I expect thousands of applications to be filed in the first few hours’ public ‘land rush’, making .eu a powerful domain name on equal footing with .com.”
Citizens wishing to register a “.eu” domain name should pick an accredited “.eu” registrar from the list at:
http://list.eurid.eu/registrars/ListRegistrars.htm?lang=en.
Their “.eu” domain name should be activated within few hours. Registration costs vary across the EU, and the total fees charged (by Registrar and Registry) may be as low as EUR 12 in some cases. There are hundreds of registrars competing to register names, so customers should shop around for the best deal on price, quality, and services offered.
Applications filed during the land rush will be subject to the “first come first served” principle – i.e. if two applicants apply for the same domain name, the .eu Registry will register the application that it received first. Unlike sunrise applications, land rush ones will be automatically registered without further formalities within the hours following their receipt.
The EU institutions’ entire web site (Europe’s largest single site), and all their officials’ e-mail addresses, will be switched over to .eu on 9 May, Europe Day. Old and new addresses will continue to work side-by-side for at least one year, after which only “.eu” names will be used.
The preparation of the Commission for .eu is led by Vice President Siim Kallas who is sponsoring the move towards an eCommission.
Background
On 7 December 7, 2005 EURid, the not-for-profit organization selected after a public tender by the European Commission to manage the registration of domain names, opened its doors for applications for the registration of domain names.
EURid is the working title for the non-profit consortium of three registries: DNS-BE (Belgium), IIT CNR (Italy) and NIC SE (Sweden).
Initially, the possibility to apply for the registration of “.eu” names was reserved to trade mark holders and public bodies (from December 7, 2005 to February 7, 2006). This possibility was then extended to holders of other “prior rights”, such as company names or business identifiers (from February 7 to April 7). Finally, anyone established in the European Union at all may now register a “.eu” domain name.
Further information on how to apply for a domain name under .eu and other administrative information can be found in EURid’s homepage:
http://www.eurid.eu/en
Commission’s .eu web pages:
http://europa.eu.int/information_society/policy/doteu/index_en.htm
MEMO/06/159
