EURid, which manages the .EU TLD, published its statistics for 2018. At the end of 2018, 3,684,750 domain names were registered in this zone, or 63,129 domains fewer than at the end of the third quarter of 2018. That is the lowest number in six years, since September 2012 when .EU only had 3,665,525 names.
EURid representatives blame the decline on two factors: growing efforts to fight domain name abuse and Brexit. In the fourth quarter of last year, 36,530 .EU domains were blocked for abuse. According to Domain Incite, EURid announced that UK-based .EU registrants can expect to lose their names by May, should the country crash out of the EU with no transition deal on March 29. No agreement has been reached yet, so naturally registrants are worried. The number of UK-based domain names registered in .EU dropped by 32,173 during the fourth quarter of 2018.
