The European Commission hopes to choose a nonprofit organisation to
run the .eu top-level domain (TLD) for the European Union (EU) by
early December, according to an EC official.
The deadline for submissions to become the .eu registry operator
passed last Friday with fewer than 10 applications, said the
official, who requested anonymity.
"We are confident that the number of submissions will be adequate
for us to make an equitable selection of the best candidate," said
Per Haugaard, spokesman for information society matters at the
EC.
"We see great potential for the .eu domain name as a means of
boosting e-commerce activity in Europe," Haugaard said.
However, the EC has yet to pick its team to evaluate the
submissions, though each of the 15 European Union member states has
nominated people for the job.
The .eu registry will not only register .eu domain names, it will
also settle conflicts where more than one person or organization
claims rights to the same name.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN,
gave the European Union the go-ahead in principle to launch the new
domain name last year.