Brussels, 23/05/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission decided Thursday to designate EURID - the European Registry for Internet Domains as the Registry for the dot EU (.eu) Top Level Domain (TLD). The suffix .eu is intended to become the distinctive pan-European identification of websites and e-mail addresses, comparable to .org or .com. 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. EURID has committed to consult stakeholders from the European Internet Community and to ensure contacts with regional and international organizations involved in the Internet.
The Commission made its decision following a call for expressions of interest published last September and an evaluation by independent experts of the seven applications received. The Commission will now 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 the Member States and the Registry, will establish 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 the rate of progress on these issues, the .eu Top Level Domain is expected to be operational towards the end of the year. Commenting on the news, Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner responsible for the Information Society, said: "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 ".