Report on the implementation, functioning and effectiveness of the .eu Top-Level Domain from April 2019 to April 2021

Summary:

Report published by the European Commission on 11 January 2022, concerning the implementation, functioning and effectiveness of the .eu Top-Level Domain for the period between April 2019 and April 2021.

Further information:

This report concerns the .eu internet domain, the country code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) of the European Union (EU), and its variants in Cyrillic and Greek scripts, as administered and managed by the non-profit organisation EURid on the basis of a Service Concession Contract with the European Commission. Pursuant to Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No 733/2002, the Commission is required to submit a report on the implementation, functioning and effectiveness of the .eu domain to the European Parliament and the Council every two years. This report covers the period from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2021.

With 3.7 million registered .eu domain names in April 2021, the .eu domain is the eighth largest ccTLD worldwide. In line with the global and European domain name market, the growth of .eu flattened. The negative growth due to a continued saturation and consolidation of the domain name market and the impact of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU was compensated by the rise of demand for domain names during the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, driven by organisations and companies switching to online presence.

Over the period covered, the .eu Registry allowed EU citizens to register a .eu domain name independently of their place of residence. It expanded European linguistic diversity and multilingualism across the .eu domain by launching .ευ, marking the completion of the efforts to support all EU non-Latin scripts in the .eu TLD. The .eu Registry continued to work on ensuring a trustworthy .eu environment by launching the Abuse Prevention Early Warning System (APEWS), the Know-Your-Customer project (KYC) , and the registrar lock service in 2020. It conducted systematic checks on COVID-19 related domain name registrations during the pandemic.

Partnerships were strengthened with law enforcement and other public authorities at both the national and European levels in the fight against illegal activities involving .eu domain names. In 2021, the .eu Registry and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) launched a joint Action Plan to combat abusive and speculative domain name registrations.

Overall, the .eu Registry maintained a highly resilient and robust technical infrastructure, ensuring a 100% availability of the .eu domain, also during the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on the .eu Registry’s platforms and services in spring 2020.