The European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) adopted its position on the proposed reform of the ‘.eu’ domain name in a resounding vote on Wednesday 21 November.
The 14 parliamentary compromises and the negotiating mandate were all voted in less than two minutes on this technical rather than political reform project, which was launched by the Commission at the end of April 2018 (see EUROPE 12011).
There is indeed a consensus on the need to reform the Regulation (733/2002), which entered into force in 2006, with the aim of modernising and making the top level domain name '.eu' more attractive.
‘.eu' is the eighth most used domain name, with 3.8 million sites registered in 2017.
By the end of October, the Council had made few changes to the European Commission's initial draft (see EUROPE 12124).
While its position is not revolutionary, Parliament opposes the Commission on a few specific points, first and foremost the 'Registry' - the entity responsible for organising and managing the domain name.
Delegated act
ITRE therefore wishes Parliament and the Council to have a say in the designation of the body responsible for dealing with the 'Registry'. This designation would still be made by the Commission, but ITRE proposes that it be governed by Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which provides for the modalities of delegated acts.
Decisions taken by the Commission could thus be revoked by the Council and Parliament. In this way, ITRE wishes to ensure that the Commission will respect the principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination in the designation of the Registry.
However, according to Parliament's position, the 'Registry' would not necessarily be a non-profit body, contrary to the Council's wishes.
Safeguarding the rule of law
Parliament also wants to ensure that the Commission is surrounded by experts able to guide it on how the contract should be negotiated, in particular as regards the rules allowing the Registry to suspend a website using the domain name.
In this respect, the ITRE Committee requests that the revocation be in principle caused by a notification sent to the Registry by a competent Court of Justice, following a ‘final court decision’.
The text's rapporteur, Fredrick Federley (ALDE, Sweden), welcomed the fact that MEPs had added a ‘safeguard clause for the rule of law’.
Parliament also wishes to go further than the Commission's project in increasing the number of people who can register a '.eu' site, by extending the possibility to companies, organisations and individuals established not in the European Union but in the European Economic Area. (Original version in French by Mathieu Solal)