ccTLDs.com » Country Code Specific Forums » .eu Forum

[Ray Neu]

.eu

Who can register a .eu domain?

Any company or organization based in the European Union

Any natural person living in the EU is eligible to register a .eu domain name.


Does .eu allow Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)?

Yes

Several options are currently being considered for the introduction of IDNs under .eu, some of which might involve changing the regulations that are the basis of the .eu policies and procedures.

IDNs under .eu will be available in all 23 official European Union languages.


Can my domain name have spaces or special characters?

• Alphabetical characters a to z, the numbers 0 through 9 and the hyphen (-).

• Names must be at least 2 characters long and may have a maximum length of 63 characters

• No name can begin with or end with a hyphen (-)

source: 101domain.com / EURid

[Ray Neu]

Hello and welcome Jabber....

Do you invest in .eu?

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by Ray Neu

Hello and welcome to the .eu Forum....

Here you can discuss legal issue regarding registration, maintenance, transfer, and protection of your .eu domains here...

Should be interesting to see if there is any life in .eu ccTLD. Most of the activity seems to be in Germany and to a smaller extent Poland.

Regards...jmcc

[Daniel Dryzek]

Originally Posted by jmcc

Should be interesting to see if there is any life in .eu ccTLD. Most of the activity seems to be in Germany and to a smaller extent Poland.

Yes, you are right. Not in all of European countries .eu domain is the same popular. I know for sure that .eu domain gets more and more popular in Poland but of course still there's not much to compare with .pl popularity in Poland.

I think that .eu needs more time, it's very young TLD. We also need more development under .eu domains, so it gets more popular and more valuable in time.

DD

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by Daniel Dryzek

Yes, you are right. Not in all of European countries .eu domain is the same popular. I know for sure that .eu domain gets more and more popular in Poland but of course still there's not much to compare with .pl popularity in Poland.

It is that way in most EU countries where there is a good and strong ccTLD. It seems to be less than 10% of the ccTLD in some countries.

I think that .eu needs more time, it's very young TLD. We also need more development under .eu domains, so it gets more popular and more valuable in time.

It should have been a lot better. The mistake that the European Commission made was giving the .eu ccTLD to the Belgian DNS.be to run. Eurid is really just DNS.be with a few changes. It will take at least five years for .eu to become valuable. While Eurid might claim that there are 59K Irish owned .eu domains, the reality is that there are less than 10K genuinely Irish owned .eu domains. The rest are owned by cyberwarehousing companies using Irish addresses. The same applies for the UK and for Cyprus.

The last web survey I ran on .eu ccTLD showed very little development and a lot of domain parking. Some domainers have had good results with parking but people in Europe think ccTLD first, .com second, then .net and .org. They rarely think of .eu first.

Regards...jmcc

[Daniel Dryzek]

Originally Posted by jmcc

Some domainers have had good results with parking but people in Europe think ccTLD first, .com second, then .net and .org. They rarely think of .eu first.

.eu will probably never be the number one in Europe but that's not the point at all. There is a lot of place for being number two. It should be domain for all kind of websites that want to be European, that want to somehow connect people in Europe. And that's EU and .eu about.

In Poland there are more .eu than .com domains for example and I think .eu is already second most popular domain after .pl.

DD

[Carter]

I've sold some .eu in the last 6 months but I don't see many companies excited about it.

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by Daniel Dryzek

.eu will probably never be the number one in Europe but that's not the point at all. There is a lot of place for being number two.

Possibly. However that place is currently occupied by .com and will be for at least five years.

In Poland there are more .eu than .com domains for example and I think .eu is already second most popular domain after .pl.

The 01/March/2009 statistics (approximate) for 5755 identified Polish hosters were
.com: 154649 (zone)
.net: 44918 (zone)
.org: 22829 (zone)
.biz: 14123 (zone)
.info: 41268 (zone)
.mobi: 1210 (zone)

The .eu figure for Polish .eu domains today was 173354. The statistics above are very rough as I have not done any real work in identifying Polish hosters. However the com/net/org/biz/info/mobi stats are derived from the zonefiles.

Regards...jmcc

[longhorn]

Yes, I see German and Polish companies registering in .EU more than others.

[Daniel Dryzek]

Originally Posted by longhorn

Yes, I see German and Polish companies registering in .EU more than others.

Does anyone know, which other countries use .eu domains more often than the average? How about France (well, I don't think so but maybe..) or Spain? Netherlands, Czech Republic, Italy?

DD

[DotEs]

.EU domains in Spain are just plain dead.

[NeazMH]

Originally Posted by DotEs

.EU domains in Spain are just plain dead.

I agree

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by Daniel Dryzek

Does anyone know, which other countries use .eu domains more often than the average? How about France (well, I don't think so but maybe..) or Spain? Netherlands, Czech Republic, Italy?

I'd have to do some queries on the stats databases here but I think that most of the EU countries would be ccTLD/gTLD with .eu running between .net and .com. However the problem for .eu is that most of those registrations are brand protection registrations. They redirect to the registrant's main ccTLD or .com website or are left unused. NL would definitely be ccTLD positive as .nl ccTLD is very strong (over 3 million .nl domains registered). Italy - not sure. The problem is figuring out what is the average usage for .eu ccTLD. Perhaps the easiest way would be to provide a breakdown of gTLD/TLD usage by country, the number of identified .eu domains on the hosters in the countries, and the Eurid figure for domains registered for the countries.

Regards...jmcc

[bemarnet]

The .eu market started with very big expectatives, but I think it is the same problem as the .us market.

Some countries believe in the .us Domain, specially Germany. In Spain it is no Market at all.

I personally are very European minded and really like the .eu TLD.

But many which I have i Develop, like notasdeprensa.eu

[DomainInvesting]

Thanks for the great information everyone!

Has anyone seen companies advertise with a .eu domain?

[longhorn]

Originally Posted by DomainInvesting

Thanks for the great information everyone!

Has anyone seen companies advertise with a .eu domain?

I saw a couple companies in Germany with both their .de and .eu

[DomainInvesting]

Is the .eu domain in English or German? Do .eu domains typically follow the language for the country they are located in?

[mvl]

The .eu market is huge and growing as new countries join the European Union. And because trade barriers within the EU are slowly being eliminated, a European focus will become more and more important for companies in those countries, on the long term maybe just as important as a national focus. Therefore I think .eu has a very bright future, although it might not be a tld for a quick flip.

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by bemarnet

The .eu market started with very big expectatives, but I think it is the same problem as the .us market.

The .eu ccTLD launch was different to .us ccTLD. The registry, Eurid, was incompetent. The rights validation company PwC BE was so incompetent that it managed to get its own initial Sunrise application denied. The whole Sunrise process was massively abused by cybersquatters using dodgy Benelux "trademarks".

There was no competent expertise in preventing massive cyberwarehousing even though the regulations were clear on this aspect. Even when .eu launched, there was no working transfer mechanism.

Perhaps over a million cyberwarehoused domains are still registered even though this is against .eu regulations. Until the .eu ccTLD is removed from Eurid, there can be no progress in .eu ccTLD. It just is not considered a serious ccTLD for business. In Ireland and the UK, the extension is dead. If it wasn't for Germany, the .eu ccTLD would have failed completely.

Regards...jmcc

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by DomainInvesting

Is the .eu domain in English or German? Do .eu domains typically follow the language for the country they are located in?

The commonest use for .eu is as a portal site leading to the various local ccTLD websites. Most German .eu domains are probably not used and are left on the registrar/hoster's parking pages. There are some German .eu websites that I have seen but it cannot compete with the 13 million or so .de domains.

Regards...jmcc

[mvl]

Originally Posted by jmcc

...
Perhaps over a million cyberwarehoused domains are still registered even though this is against .eu regulations.
...

No, the anti-warehousing regulations only apply to registrars, not to registrants.

Until the .eu ccTLD is removed from Eurid, there can be no progress in .eu ccTLD.

I strongly disagree on that. The market is a much bigger force than Eurid.

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by mvl

No, the anti-warehousing regulations only apply to registrars, not to registrants.

Many of the cyberwarehousers are registrars.

I strongly disagree on that. The market is a much bigger force than Eurid.

Eurid is the cause and facilitator of the problem. It has to be eliminated to restore business confidence in the ccTLD and the massive cyberwarehousing problem has to be addressed. Otherwise .eu ccTLD will be a junk ccTLD with minimal resale value.

Regards...jmcc

[mvl]

Originally Posted by jmcc

Many of the cyberwarehousers are registrars.

Afaik they are not registrars formally. In the cases that I know of the registrants and registrars are at least different business entities.

[jmcc]

Originally Posted by mvl

Afaik they are not registrars formally. In the cases that I know of the registrants and registrars are at least different business entities.

There has been massive fraud in .eu and Eurid did nothing to stop it. The ccTLD is not a trustworthy extension for most of the EU. As a result of Eurid's incompetence and failure to manage the ccTLD, most of the ccTLDs in the EU directly gained and continue to gain registrations. That is why the ccTLD is of little value to domainers. While 3 million domains might sound impressive, breaking those domains down on a country by country basis and analysing the number of active websites shows that .eu ccTLD is not a serious player in the European domain landscape. I know it sounds harsh but sometimes the truth is so.

Regards...jmcc

[mvl]

Originally Posted by jmcc

There has been massive fraud in .eu and Eurid did nothing to stop it.

That is a big accusation. Please be aware that those regulations were created by the European Parliament and the European Commission and not by Eurid. If the regulations are not properly designed there is nothing that Eurid can do. It is not Eurids fault that the regulations allowed last minute trademark registrations for the sunrise periods. It is not Eurids fault that parties were allowed to hammer the registration servers at the start of the sunrise and landrush periods using numerous different registrars, created only for this purpose. The rules and regulations allowed it. If you look closely you will see that Eurid can hardly be blamed. The rules and procedures might not be well-designed but that is not Eurids fault. I have attended the Brussels roadshow preceding the sunrise and landrush periods and been involved professionally during those sunrise and landrush periods and I witnessed what happened from the inside.

In general: the rules were certainly bent, but not broken.