Commission publishes rules concerning eu domain name

May 6th, 2004
By Leigh Phillips

The European Commission has published the public policy rules concerning the implementation and functions of the ".eu" top level domain in the EU Official Journal.

The ".eu" domain is intended to provide a European internet identity for companies and citizens, comparable to ".org" or ".com". This regulation is a further step towards the commercial availability of ".eu" names. It sets out public policy rules for a wide range of issues including eligibility, requests for domain name registration, accreditation of registrars, provisions for languages, reservation of geographical and geopolitical names, registration of names corresponding to prior rights, and a dispute resolution procedure.

Last year, the European Commission designated EURID - the European Registry for Internet Domains - as the registry for the TLD. The three founder members of EURID are currently managing the country codes ".be" (Belgium), ".it" (Italy) and ".se" (Sweden). Two associated members are from acceding countries.

The contract with the ".eu" registry should be signed in the near future and a four month sunrise period in which names can be registered that correspond to prior rights or public bodies should start later this year.

Pre-registration or reservation of ".eu" domain names is not yet possible. Indeed, action has already been taken by authorities in some member states against organisations that have been making false or misleading claims to be able to pre-register names for the ".eu" domain.