EURid, which manages .EU, the unified European Union domain, has released its Q4 2019 Progress Report. The update includes a number of positive developments for the domain and the registry. For example, the number of new .EU registrations between October and December 2019 totaled 161,690. Norway showed the highest growth among the European states that can register domain names in .EU: up 10.9 percent among individuals and legal entities. The average renewal rate reached a significant 80 percent. Finally, EURid won Registry of the Year at the CENTR Awards.
However, despite all these indisputable achievements, .EU continues to shrink. For several quarters in a row, the total number of registrations in the domain zone has been steadily decreasing. As of the end of the third quarter, there were 3,617,536 domain names registered in .EU, but by the end of the fourth quarter, the number dropped to 3,606,311. While this decrease is not drastic, the trend is rather alarming. As before, EURid representatives attribute the slump in registrations to Great Britain leaving the European Union.
