Since 11:00 this morning, anyone within the European Union has been able to register an available .eu domain name on a first come first served basis. During the first four hours EURid – the not-for-profit organisation operating the Internet top level domain .eu – received 702 684 new registrations. From December, when .eu first opened, until now it has only been possible for holders of prior rights, for instance a trademark, to apply for a .eu names. EURid has received more than 300 000 such applications, many of which are already in active use. But from today no prior right is needed and the process of getting a .eu domain name is much simpler.

“We are satisfied to see that the interest in .eu has been so large and that many already regard .eu as a useful complement to Internet’s national top level domain names,” says Marc Van Wesemael, the Managing Director of EURid.

The more than 1 000 accredited registrars who assist potential domain name holders in registering domain names were quite keen to start registering. During the first hour .eu domain names were being registered at an average speed of 76 per second.

The first domain names to be registered today were:

dekoration.eu

buchung.eu

tankstellen.eu

exhibitionist.eu

eurorechner.eu

See list of top-3 countries of registrants for the first 4 hours.

Great Britain             176 668 domain names

Germany                   138 085 domain names

The Netherlands       100 445 domain names

On EURid’s website the statistics page is updated every 15 minutes making it possible to follow the development of .eu. See www.eurid.eu or http://status.eurid.eu directly for statistics.

About EURid – The European Registry of Internet Domain Names

EURid is a not-for-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to register and manage .eu domain names. EURid was founded on April 8, 2003, with headquarter in Brussels. Regional offices will be established in Stockholm, Pisa and Prague. The founding members, DNS BE, NIC SE, IIT CNR, operate the country top-level domains for Belgium (.be), Sweden (.se) and Italy (.it). The registries Arnes, for the Slovenian domain (.si) and CZ NIC, for the Czech domain (.cz) are associated members.

See more on the web site www.eurid.eu

For further information, please contact:

Patrik Lindén, EURid’s Communications Manager, at +32 (0)2 401 27 93 or by email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it