EURid vzw (European Registry for Internet Domains) is the

nonprofit organisation A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

appointed by the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

as the

domain name registry A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a do ...

that operates the

.eu .eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Are ...

top-level domain A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...

and its variants in other scripts – .ею (.eu in Cyrillic) as of 1 June 2016, .ευ (in Greek) as of 14 November 2019.

Operations

Established in

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

, with its headquarters located in Diegem, EURid is a consortium of two European

ccTLD A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all t ...

operators:

DNS Belgium DNS Belgium is a non-profit organisation responsible for managing the ccTLD top level domain, as well as the new gTLD domain extensions and . Domain names are registered by the various agents of DNS Belgium, on behalf of their individual clients, ...

(

.be .be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. As of November 2022 there are 1,746,459 registered domains. History The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit ...

) and IIT-CNR (

.it .it is the national top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Italy. Registration is open to organisations and individuals of legal age who are citizens or residents of/headquartered in the countries of the European Economic Area (EEA), the Vatica ...

). In May 2003 the Commission designated it as the .eu domain name registry. In October 2006, EURid opened their first branch office in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

. Two further branch offices were opened in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

since then. EURid's strategic committee consists of Sandra Hoferichter (Chairwoman), Pedro Oliveira (Vice-Chair), Marco Pierani, Luc Hendrickx, Marco Conti, Delia Belciu, Marie-Emmanuelle Haas, Tomáš Maršálek, Marko Bonac, Jakub Christoph, Luca Cassetti, and Greg Mroczkowski. EURid uses the

Extensible Provisioning Protocol The Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) is a flexible protocol designed for allocating objects within registries over the Internet. The motivation for the creation of EPP was to create a robust and flexible protocol that could provide communicat ...

(EPP) which enables registrars to perform operations on .eu

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...

s directly. EURid's website is available in the 24 official languages of the European Union.

Domain holders outside the European Union

Residents, companies and organisations based in countries within the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Ass ...

(EEA) but outside the European Union are able to use .eu domains, namely

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein (), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (german: link=no, Fürstentum Liechtenstein), is a German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. On 1 January 2021, EURid disabled all domains belonging to UK individuals and businesses following

Brexit Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...

, upon which the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

left the EEA.

References

External links

*
WHOIS for .eu domain names
Domain Name System European Union telecommunications policy Information technology organizations based in Europe Internet and the European Union Organizations established in 2003 {{EU-stub