- David Goldstein -
The United Kingdom left the European Union on January 31, 2020 and then an 11-month transition phase ran until December 31, 2021. One of the consequences of Brexit is British entities and individuals are no longer eligible to hold or register .eu domain names. So on January 1, 2021 all remaining .eu domain names registered to British registrants were “suspended”.
As of December 31, there were over 81,000 .eu registrations to British registrants. How many of these were used as websites and email for businesses isn’t known, but on January 1 they all stopped working and were put in a “suspended” status.
For any British .eu registrants, to keep their domain name they need to update their registration data by indicating one of the following:
Within the first week of 2021, EURid, the .eu registry, had been contacted by the registrants of thousands of .eu domains and over 2,500 domain names were made operational again.
If registration details are not updated for the “suspended” domain names are:
Brexit has been particularly harsh on .eu registrations which, going by EURid’s end of quarter reports, peaked at around 323,000 at the end of the first quarter of 2018, meaning there have been over 240,000 registrations lost in almost 3 years.
Any .eu registrant that has had their domain name “suspended” should contact us immediately so we can discuss what options are available to you.