Eurid and dot EU domain on track to launch before 2004

May 22nd, 2003
By Paul Meller, IDG News Service

The European Commission confirmed today the appointment of a Belgian-led consortium called Eurid (the European Registry of Internet Domain Names) to manage the .eu top-level domain (TLD).

The .eu TLD will be up and running by the end of the year, a commission spokesman said. It will sit alongside generic domains like .com and .info and country codes like .fr and .uk in the Internet address space.

Eurid emerged in March as the front-runner to operate the domain.

Erkki Liikanen, European commissioner for the enterprise and information society, said that once the registry is fully operational, businesses, organizations and citizens in the European Union will be able to register their domain names in the .eu TLD. "I believe that the creation of the .eu top-level domain will give European citizens and businesses the possibility to acquire a European identity on the Internet," he said.

The commission will conclude a contract with Eurid, and then appropriate steps will be taken with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the inclusion of .eu in the global Internet Domain Name System.

At the same time, the commission, in consultation with member states and the registry, will establish public policy rules to deal with issues like speculative and abusive registrations of domain names, intellectual property and other rights, issues of language and geographical concepts, and the extra-judicial settlement of conflicts. Depending on progress on these issues, .eu is expected to be operational toward the end of the year.

Some further steps still have to be taken before .eu domain names can be registered. The commission said it will contact ICANN so that the .eu TLD is included in the root zone file. Eurid will also have to accredit registrars, which will manage the registration of domain names for the benefit of end users under competitive market rules, the commission said.

The commission said Eurid will be based in Brussels.