In our April 2018 newsletter, we shared the news that .eu domain names will no longer be available for UK residents and entities post-Brexit. Since then Brexit has been postponed twice, but the new date is fast-approaching. In case of no deal, as of 31 October 2019 over 300,000 .eu domain names will potentially be affected. This article updates you on what happened since April and what steps to take next.
Quick recap: what is the issue here?
The .eu Top Level Domain is subject to an EU legal framework that reserves the right to register and own .eu domain names to EU citizens, non-EU citizens residing in the EU and undertakings or organisations established in the EU.
CentralNic Group Plc (LON:CNIC) provides registry services, distribution, and strategic consultancy for new TLDs, ccTLDs and SLDs. They use their in-house developed IT platforms to distribute its portfolio of popular domains to a global network of over 1,500 registrars (retailers such as GoDaddy LLC), which sell these to end users.