Brussels, April 7, 2008—The .eu top-level Internet domain celebrates its second anniversary today. On April 7, 2006 .eu became available to the general public within the European Union. It quickly became one of Europe’s largest top-level domains. Today there are more than 2.8 million registered .eu domain names, and approximately 2500 new .eu domain names are registered each business day.

The use of .eu has grown over the past two years along with the recognition of this domain’s unique benefit: It offers one common European identity for 490 million Europeans in 27 different countries. This common identity explains why Bridgestone, Century 21 and Daikin are among the companies that use .eu domain names.

A .eu domain name was the obvious choice for Mirai, a growing home entertainment product company. "We didn't want dot-com anonymity," explains Mirai’s general manager, Paul Butler. "We wanted to be known as a European company."

In terms of the total number of registered domain names per country, .eu has been most popular in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, France and Italy, while the biggest growth has been seen in North eastern parts of Europe. The number of registrations in Poland increased by 48.6% in 2007, for example, followed closely by Lithuania (48.5%) and Finland (39.9%).

Registrations alone don’t tell the full story of .eu’s success over the past two years, according to Marc Van Wesemael, managing director of EURid, the European registry for the .eu domain. "The renewal rates have remained high for .eu domain names," he notes. "That is a vote of confidence from our more than one million domain name holders."

For additional information, see the press release from the European Commission or contact Patrik Lindén, EURid communications manager, via telephone at +46 70 550 71 98 or via email to press@eurid.eu.