On Friday 27 April, the European Commission unveiled a plan to make first level .eu domains more accessible.
Regulation 733/2002 allows, as of April 2006, the domain name .eu to made available to any European citizen at an affordable price, explains the European Commission (see EUROPE 9170).
In practice, this first level domain name guarantees users respect of their rights under EU legislation on the site they’re visiting. The .eu domain name allows companies to have greater visibility in the Single Market and easier access to e-commerce.
Since 2005, two major changes have been seen – a wide majority of the European population now has access to the internet and the number of domain names available has mushroomed. Therefore, the number of sites using .eu has been stagnating around the 4 million market since 2017.
This recent stagnation has encouraged the European Commission to take action to allow the .eu domain name to remain a powerful bias for citizens whereby they can demonstrate their European identity, explains the Commission.
The European Commission says that the achievement of this end will require a simplification of legibility criteria for the domain name in order to make it more accessible. EU citizens will be able to manage a .eu website from a non-EU country. Companies will no longer be required to be mostly located in a member state but will only be required to be ‘established’ in the EU.
This change will allow a number of British firms and individuals to keep their .eu websites after leaving Brexit in March 2019. The Commission says some 317,000 domains will be affected.
Greater surveillance. The plan was subject to a three-month public consultation and will boost controls on websites. Applicants for the .eu domain name will be required to provide full access to information gathered on their site to any public authority carrying out a criminal investigation or investigating fraud.
The Commission wants a central role when it comes to monitoring the domain name, suggesting that it should be given the option of keeping lists of reserved or blocked domain names. Its plan includes the creation of a multi-party structure to improve the performance of .eu domain names. (Original version in French by Mathieu Solal, trainee)