EURid, a registry managing the .EU country-code top-level domain of the European Union and its internationalized versions .ею and .ευ, has released its first-quarter numbers. According to the registry report quoted by Domain Incite, these ccTLDs had 3,681,337 registered domains as of March 31, which is a slight decrease from the 3,684,984 in the fourth quarter of 2020. Both report authors and independent analysts tend to believe that the slight drop is an echo of Brexit. On January 1, 2021, all domains registered by British individuals and legal entities in .EU were blocked. The domains have not yet been deleted and are not open to new registrations. Their registrants have time until the end of June to reregister their domains with EU-based companies or EU citizens living in the UK.
Portugal, which used to be the driver of the .EU ccTLD’s growth thanks to local registrars’ hefty discounts, had a drop in its own numbers, which also contributed to the downward trend in .EU. In another curious twist, Saint Martin, a small French overseas territory in the Caribbean Sea, posted the strongest growth in the first three months of 2021, or a double increase in registered .EU domains. While the percentage may sound impressive, the actual number does not: the territory used to have one .EU domain and now it has two.
