The European Commission (EC) is restructuring the rules for .EU domain’s registration process for British registrants. As per the new framework, the European Commission seeks to simplify the existing legal structure by enabling European or European Economic Area (EU/EEA) citizens to register a .EU domain regardless of their country of residence.
Following Britain’s exit from the European Union, the European Commission say that they decided to disallow .EU domain’s 300,000 British registrants from renewing their domains. The EC also prohibited businesses based in the U.K. from doing the same.
Four weeks later, the EC claim that they started working towards changing the eligibility rules to improve the registration process for .EU domains. They also say that the EC will ease the legal framework by allowing European citizens to register domains regardless of their country of origin.
The EC say that as of now, to register a .EU domain name, the registrant will have to stay connected to a residency in the EU/EEA. The amendment goes on to explain that a better governance of the .EU TLD is to be formed by creating a multi-stakeholder council to advise the Commission.
According to industry experts, the changes are rather confusing and will take time to strike a chord with every registrant. They also speculate that certain higher authorities may not participate given the current state of flux.
EURid, the domain registry for .EU domain say that they have decided to not participate in this process as of now. Explaining this, a spokesperson for EURid said:
As the .eu registry manager, participated in the consultation, but were not involved in the drafting process of the new Regulation.