.eu moves forward

July 2004

The newest top level domain .eu is slowly moving forward towards introduction sometime in late 2004. As you can probably guess, .eu is a new top level domain designed for use by residents and businesses in EU member states. It will be the first domain space that is not purely generic, like .com, and not specific to a single country, like .uk, although to allow its introduction the international standards body has effectively designated it as a country - Euro-sceptics take note!

The introduction of .eu has taken some time, with the domain originally being announced some years ago. In May 2003, Brussels-based EURid - an entity made up of a consortium of the Swedish, Italian and Belgium country code naming authorities - were appointed by the European Commission to run the new domain with responsibility for appointing registration service providers and other technical issues.

EURid are currently in the final stages of contractual negotiations with the Commission and are thrashing out the details of the Public Policy Rules (PPR) for .eu which are being drafted in consultation with the Member States.

Once that's finalised they must then go about getting the technical aspects of the domain arranged by negotiating another agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) - the authority that oversees the introduction of new domains into the domain name system's "root".