2.5 million .eu domain names registered


11 Apr 2007

Just one year after coming on stream, some 2.5 million .eu domain names have been registered. Just under 30,000 of these were registered in Ireland.

The .eu domain name is now Europe’s third most popular domain and seventh most popular worldwide.

In the past five months the domain has seen a 17pc increase in registrations.

“After just one year .eu has become a well-established part of Europe’s cyberspace,” said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

“This is a positive sign of the attractiveness of electronic commerce within the EU. I congratulate EURid, as the independent not-for-profit registry responsible for .eu, for successfully managing the extremely high demand from industry and the public and for helping us to deploy Europe’s identity online. I welcome in particular the recent efforts made by EURid to make .eu registrations swifter, safer and cheaper.”

Citizens and companies from all 27 EU member states have applied for a .eu domain name during its first year of existence but the strongest demand for .eu has come from Germany (31pc), the UK (17pc) and The Netherlands (12pc).

The EU says the growth of .eu has also been accompanied by an increase in demand for national domain names in most member states. For instance, since October last year the growth in the number of national domain names in Germany and the UK (.de and .uk) has been around 5pc. The Netherlands (.nl) experienced the highest growth rate – 10pc over the same period.

At its peak the .eu domain saw 76 domain names registered every second.

The actual use of .eu increased during 2006 to a point where at present 80pc of all .eu domain names led to a functioning website or email server.

By John Kennedy