Click on the clips below to watch short excerpts from the .eu awareness video (30 MB).
A .eu domain name establishes your European identity on the Internet. Below is a sample of the growing number of satisfied .eu users.
Click on photos bearing this icon 
to watch video testimonials.
"Having a .eu name gives us more of a presence," notes Claudia Bush, who heads up event marketing agency Innovision. Although the company is very proud to be based in London, "when working in Shanghai, Ghana and Nigeria, it is good to be a European company as opposed to just a London company."
Cyprus-based rock jewellery and accessory brand Etherial is headed by the young entrepreneur Marcus Platrides. He had this to say about his choice of .eu: “Our company is European. I consider myself a European. I belong to a group now rather than simply to a single nation, and our company operates within the European Union. With a European domain we have the benefit of belonging to an exclusive European web-based family.”
“A .eu domain signifies that you are part of a bigger community,” says Valentin Ciocea, initiator of the AudioCarti.eu , an ambitious project which aims to place the biggest classics in Romanian literature online in a growing audio library. “The borders between countries and cultures are slowly diminishing, as more citizens live in other European Community countries than their home countries,” she observes.
“By travelling in China, America, Africa, I started thinking about cultural diversity,” says Sven Bullaert of Belgium-based fashion company IAM. “Instead of being part of a local scene, I preferred a European identity.“
“We chose .eu for reasons of uniformity,” explains Jan Breyne of Intertrans , a Belgium-based logistic and forwarder provider. “We used to carry .nl, .lu and .be domains. But now we have a uniform structure: .eu.“
Jup van’t Veld, of Belgium-based healthy eating initiative Monchoix, observes: “What we see in the food industry is that for most companies the market has become more and more European or even global. And very often they want to put one product with one package on all these different markets. In order to save space, sometimes you can put some of the information on a website, rather than directly on pack. In that case a .eu website is very useful to reach all these consumers at once.“
Ronan McDonagh of electronics manufacturer Pioneer says, “We have 17 national websites. We want to bring them under 1 domain. Also we hope to be able to improve the performance of our website in search engine rankings. Because instead of having lots of small websites we´ll have one big website with a large number of visitors.”
Koen Destroop of Belgium-based window and shutter manufacturer Winsol observes, “We are doing business in several European countries. So we used to carry .fr .uk .ie or .be domains. .eu gives us the opportunity to unify our communication.“
Nicolas Fermont and Phillippe Largueze, founders of the France-based blog snowbroader.eu, explain why they chose a .eu domain name: “Europe has some of the best mountains in the world and a very active snowboard scene. We wanted to address these people, so we decided to position our site as a European one. That´s why we decided to take a .eu.“
“Unicreditgroup is the third biggest European banking group with a presence in 23 European countries. To me, the .eu domain name carries a very strong subconscious connotation of “the best in Europe,” says Head of Corporate Identity, Marc Beckers, from the group’s Italian office. “Any institution or any company that really wants to express its “European-ness” should go for it today, rather than tomorrow. It’s such a natural act.”
Tom Sjöberg, Managing Director of Finland-based Touring Cars, says that ".eu means we are not restricted to a certain country. It has become part of our company's corporate image, telling our customers that we are international."
“As the certification authority we verify electronic shops and Internet sellers within the European Union,” says Project Manager for Assaymark Lubor Kopecký, from the company’s headquarters in the Czech Republic. “The .eu domain gave us the possibility to present ourselves under one trustful brand in all countries.”
Emanuela Teodosio, General Manager of Romania-based Celendo, says: “Our company Celendo International, under which our travelling agency Celendo Tours & Travels functions, wanted to express the location of our tourism activity and being a European tourism agency, through the use of the .eu domain name. Our domain name has been in use since May 2006. The site attracted a lot of European traffic partly because of curiosity about the .eu domain around the world. This aspect made our business numbers go up. It was a very good choice."
“Through the .eu extension we saw the possibility to integrate virtually in Europe, trying to gain the trust of our European partners and those worldwide,” says Tiberiu Kajtor, Administrator of audio-visual service company Ro-media. “We try to convince them from the beginning that we are a truly European company just like any other from France, the United Kingdom or Germany, etc. For all these reasons, .eu is the perfect pick!”
Luc Verhaeghe of Duco, a manufacturer of natural ventilation and sun control systems explains, “It was very important for Duco to get the .eu domain name as soon as it became available. We are based in Belgium, but we aim for the European market.“
“The .eu domain name was very important to Hyundai Heavy Industries Europe,” states the company’s Marketing Engineer, Jan Coemans. “Our company name says enough: we distribute our machines all over Europe. We moved from hyundai.be to hyundai.eu. The last months we can see an increase in the number of visitors. The .eu is gaining in popularity.”
Karen Buhr, Coordinator for the German-based higher education portal
moveonnet.eu, says: ”We have a particular reputation here in Europe for higher education and in order to enable institutions to promote European higher education to students via moveonnet, the .eu domain was the best choice. Higher education in Europe has got a good reputation in the world and therefore it is good to have a .eu domain name, which reflects this.”
Andy McIntosh, owner of Scottish-based McIntosh Design, explains why he chose .eu: "The work my company produces is the kind of work that is applicable to any country within the EU. I would be denying my company's potential client range if I didn't include those outside my own country. It is for that reason that using the .eu domain is important for my business."
Terravision, a UK-based airport shuttle company, believes in the importance of a .eu domain in emphasising the company’s distinctive European character. Ms Yakuta Rajabali, Terravision’s Marketing Director, highlights the benefits of .eu for the future: “It is likely that portals and search engines will increasingly group contents on a European scale, and in this case .eu domains will most certainly be favoured.”
”Dynamic Works is one of the top web-solution providers in Europe and the entire team at Dynamic Works always recommends .eu domains to our clients,” says Angelos Gregoriou, Managing Director of the Cyprus-based company. “Whilst having offices in different locations in Europe, we find that sticking to the .eu domain means that we´re keeping true to the integrity of Europe and all that it stands for.”
Filip Lepus, IT Director and co-owner of the Romania-based business contact database Vrajitorul.eu says,“We chose the .eu domain name for two reasons: first of all, we wanted to express the availability of our services to any person living in the European area interested in Romanian companies, and secondly, our future plans envisage the expansion of our database at the European level. The .eu domain represents a novelty for a lot of customers, some of them associate it with the European Union, others read it as the pronoun for the first person singular. Either way the impact is strong and the name stays in the memory of the visitors.” In Romanian “eu” means “me”, “myself” or “I”.
”The .eu is like a trademark, and it tells people that this company has some sort of quality level,” says Karin Lass, Head of Communication for the Estonia-based Audentes educational group. “The .eu domain is associated with the European Union and Estonia is part of the European Union countries. It is important for us to express that we are offering education that is comparable to other educational institutions in Europe.”
Clara Kirchner, Director of International and Corporate Relations at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics in Spain, explains why the institution opted for a .eu domain name: “We came to the conclusion that .eu was the domain that best serves the Barcelona GSE´s mission to become a leading innovative institution in a globally competitive environment. We started with the .com and .net but they are, of course, very impersonal in this sense. We wanted to put more focus on being European. With .eu, any kind of company in any sector fits in.”
Managers of Arkkos.eu, Natale Curatolo and Olivier Cacciato, say of their choice of .eu, “The main reason we chose .eu is the sense of membership in a dynamic and intercultural environment like the European one, which goes beyond national borders and embraces the principles of openness and integration. Our website was born with the .eu domain. Thanks to the .eu domain name, every day we receive attention from different countries. The .eu domain name enables us to be seen by users in a different light: as more dynamic, new and more European. To other people wishing to switch to .eu, I can say it is the best choice to make and the sooner the better.” Arkkos.eu is as Web Solution Company with offices in Italy and Belgium.
"Being a French-Slovak start-up, we definitely define ourselves as a European company,” says Viktor Fischer, Director of Business Development for Innovatrics, speaking from the company’s Slovak offices. “Our innovative fingerprint recognition software is used by customers worldwide, from various countries in the Americas (Canada, USA, Colombia, Chile), in Asia (India, Japan), in the Middle East (Israel), and Africa (Ghana, South Africa). The www.innovatrics.eu domain name helps us to be identified as a company with a European base and international markets."
“We do primarily operate in the Swedish market but as Sweden is a part of the European Union, it was for us a natural step to take in order to position ourselves for the future. As a part of a cross-EU-border corporation, it is, in all senses, the right suffix to have,” observes Håkan Pohl, CEO of Sweden-based Toyota Center Metro Auto. “To have the .eu domain truly gives us a glimpse of a future where we can communicate with anybody across borders in Europe and share the same suffix.”
Kamil Virag, Marketing Manager of GOwarsaw, explains: “We are a Czech company using the .eu domain for our business in Poland, where we run a portal serving foreigners coming or staying in Warsaw for business. Being a portal, the decision about our Internet address and domain was, in fact, an important part of our branding. We went for the .eu domain as it basically relates to the part of the world we do business in, and it has proved to be a good choice indeed.”
"Imooty satisfies the demand for a pan-European news reference and transcends the national media perspectives,” says Kristoffer J. Lassen, cofounder of Imooty, a European news platform based in Germany. “Accordingly, it was important for us to find a common denominator for our brand, and the .eu extension is a perfect fit. Imooty.eu immediately signals a European connection and contributes to a redefinition of European media access."
Tomasz Bołcun, Marketing Communication Specialist for Poland-based Young Digital Planet, had this to say about .eu: "Young Digital Planet has been operating in the software industry since 1990 as a producer and publisher of interactive educational programs and e-learning technology. The moment the introduction of .eu was announced, we knew that we wanted a corporate .eu address. The .eu domain is an important element in our marketing communication strategy for foreign markets. Young Digital Planet cooperates with companies from all over the world, and we want to be identified as a European company."
A lot of competitors thought moving to a .eu website was "foolhardy", according to Stuart Hill, Director of Guest Accommodation and co-owner of The Claremont, a British five-star guesthouse. The guesthouse once had a slightly different name and a very different web address. Ultimately the new .eu address "proved a roaring success."
"Changing the extension into .eu felt like both a positive action and a natural move for us to do so," notes Emmi Helle, Secretary General of Finland-based ENQA, the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education. "Using .eu is the right step for those wanting a European profile, and the feedback we have received has been only positive. We would absolutely recommend it to someone living or working within the EU."
European clients consider the use of a .eu domain "a bit of a compliment to the European connection," according to Daniel Eilon, Partner and Head of Commercial Department of UK-based Healys Solicitors. "For our American clients, many of them consider London to be a stepping-stone to Europe since America and England share a language and a similar culture, and they are also curious and interested in .eu.”
"We would love to work with people in other parts of Europe rather than keeping it local or London or UK," explains Iain Scott, who heads the Base Creative marketing and design agency in London. A .eu domain name makes marketing and financial sense to this company. "Not having to change anything when we are accessing a European market will be a huge saving," he says.