The latest loss from the United Kingdom's impending departure from the European Union is the removal of the .eu domain for English companies and citizens.
As the Register has learned, the European Commission announced on Thursday that after Brexit, all companies and citizens of the United Kingdom will be barred from owning .eu domain names. In a letter to stakeholders, the Commission, which is the EU’s legislative body, said: “Companies and organisations established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and individuals resident in the United Kingdom will no longer be able to register or renew .eu domain names.”
Exactly when these domain names will be removed is unclear, but the Commission believes it could happen on the date of Brexit, which is scheduled for March 30, 2019. This development will certainly not have a catastrophic impact, but it will affect the 317,000 domains estimated to be registered in the United Kingdom.
As the Register points out, what is unusual in this case is the strict nature of the Commission’s decision. There appears to be no legal recourse for those affected by this measure and no post-Brexit timeframe for domain owners to transfer their sites. This is an exception, as historically, structural changes of this kind have been dealt with more slowly, such as the Soviet Union’s .su domain, which was introduced in 1990 (just 15 months before the collapse of the Soviet Union itself) and was soon replaced by the .ru TLD. However, Russia applied to continue operating and to date more than 100,000 sites using it are still operational.
It seems that the European Union took the United Kingdom's departure from its fold very personally.
