The European Commission is consulting its 15 national
member governments over a draft decision to pick a Belgian-led
consortium to run the long-awaited .eu top-level domain name
registry.
The front runner is the Brussels-based European Registry of
Internet Domains consortium, or Eurid, which has been set up by DNS
Belgium vzw/asbl, Istituto di Informatica e Telematica Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche and the Network Information Centre Sweden
(NIC SE).
The final decision is due next month, after the consultation
process with the member states is over, said Anne Troye, an
official dealing with the .eu domain name.
The draft decision, awards second place to a consortium called the
EU Domain Registry and third place to one called Eureg, according
to a leaked copy of the preliminary conclusion.
Eurid plans to offer a so-called sunrise period for trademark
owners to register domains connected to their trademarks and brands
to avert cybersquatting problems. It plans to sell domains for €10
(£6.40) each initially, with the intention that this will fall to
€5 after a year.
