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Tuesday 8 January 2019 - .eu domain names

This bit is a disclaimer. If EURID still decide to delete your names or if anything else happens as a result of acting upon this text then this is out of our control and we can't do anything about it.

Unfortunately the ongoing fiasco in the UK shows no sign of crystallising into anything we can work with even though there are now only 80 days left until the clock runs out under Article 50, so this bit of speculation (and this is all it is, not advice, legal or otherwise) is the best we can do.

EURID (the bit of the EU that runs the .eu top level domain) has produced a document which is not ambiguous, to summarise, .eu domains are for people and organisations that exist within the EU so if the UK leaves then UK residents no longer have a claim to this name space. Removal of .eu domain names from UK residents will happen by not accepting renewals when they are due. The document can be found here.

If you are UK resident and have .eu domains that you want to keep using after March then one possibility is that you could find a friendly resident of a more stable EU country who can take the domain on.

In practice, nothing should ever come through in the post for one of these domains, but you need to make sure they are a real person and that you have obtained consent, as they will become the legal owners.