Now you don’t have to live in the EU to register a .eu domain, but there’s a catch
Residents of countries outside the European Union are now able to register .eu domain names.
A new rule that kicked in at the weekend broadened eligibility from only residents of the EU and European Economic Area. Now, residency is irrelevant.
The catch is that you have to still have to be an EU citizen to qualify.
EURid, the .eu registry, said the change opens up the ccTLD to “millions of Europeans living around the world”.
In practice, it could open up the space to basically anyone.
While residency can fairly easily be checked by looking at the mailing address in a Whois record, demonstrating citizenship is a different kettle of fish.
There’s no indication that EURid is asking registrars to collect passport numbers at the point of sale, so it appears to be a post-registration enforcement regime.
.eu is also still open to non-EU citizens who live in the EU or EEA.
.eu had 3.6 million names under management at the last count, having declined by about 200,000 since the Brexit vote three years ago.
Let’s see if the new, liberalized regime has any impact.
Informative post..
At first I was like: This can’t be true that you’re able to register an .eu domain all over the world. But with this little “catch” I feel like it’s quite a good decision.
But we will see how this goes and if the .eu domains will recieve a boost again after the huge decline.