EURid, the European Registry of Internet Domain Names, manages the .eu top-level Internet domain under contract to the European Commission. EURid operates the registry under terms set by EU regulations 733/2002 (pdf), 874/2004 (pdf), 1654/2005 (pdf), 1255/2007 (pdf) and 560/2009 (pdf).

The main office is located just outside of Brussels, Belgium. Regional offices are located in Stockholm, Sweden; Pisa, Italy; and Prague, the Czech Republic. EURid employees provide online and telephone support in all official EU languages to around 900 accredited registrars worldwide who offer .eu domain registration services.

Structure

EURid was incorporated under Belgian law as a private, not-for-profit organisation on 8 April 2003. See the EURid Articles of Association for more detailed information.

There are 3 founding members:

• DNS Belgium, the registry for .be, the national top-level domain of Belgium
• Istituto di Informatica e Telematica, the registry for .it, the national top-level domain of Italy
• Stiftelsen för Internetinfrastruktur, IIS, the registry for .se, the national top-level domain of Sweden

There are 4 associate members:

• The Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (ARNES), the registry for .si, the national top-level domain for Slovenia
• CZ.NIC, the registry for .cz, the national top-level domain for the Czech Republic
• ISOC-ECC, the European chapter of the Internet Society
• BUSINESSEUROPE, a confederation of 39 industry-related federations from 33 countries

History

In 1999 the European Council began discussing a single top-level domain for Europe. After several years of consideration, the European Commission appointed EURid as the operator of the .eu registry in May 2003. The.eu domain was added to the root zone of the Internet Domain Name System in March 2005. EURid began accepting applications for .eu domain names, on a limited basis, in December 2005. This introductory period was known as Sunrise. General registration began in April 2006.

For more information, see the Background & Timeline page, the Sunrise page and the European Commission's History of the .eu TLD.