The EURid registry, which administers .EU, the top-level domain for the European Union countries, has reviewed the fourth quarter of 2020. As of December 31, the domain zone had 3,684,984 registered names, including the internationalized domain zones .ею and .ευ. The registry saw 3 percent growth in the third quarter; 108,682 domain names were added overall.
The registry should be congratulated on this success, all the more so since .EU was on a downward trend for quite a while. This was mostly due to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Brexit eliminated the possibility for UK legal entities and individuals to register names with the .EU domain, and current name registrations could not be renewed.
The media has reported that about 80,000 names owned by UK registrants were ineligible for the .EU domain zone as of January 1. It would be interesting to know whether the domain will be able to redress these losses in the first quarter. Portugal was the main driver of Q4 growth, due to local registrar promotions and discounts. It was up 64.8% sequentially and 116% year-over-year, according to Domain Incite.
