All European Union citizens can now buy an internet
domain bearing the .eu suffix.
The public are now getting the chance to buy .eu domains after a
four-month grace period that first allowed firms to reserve domains
that matched their trademarks.
More than 300,000 organisations used this “sunrise period” to
apply for an .eu domain. It is expected that domain name
speculators will now move into the market, buying up potentially
lucrative domains to sell on.
The European Union is using Eurid as an .eu domain name
administrator. Companies and organisations in Germany have already
made up over 28% of .eu domain name registrations.
The Netherlands has accounted for almost 17% of applications,
and France over 11%. The UK has seen the fourth biggest number of
.eu requests with 9.4% of applications.
Germany and the Netherlands have the highest number of domain
name registrars in Europe, which could partly explain their
lead.
