When the UK announced its intention to withdraw from the European Union it was clear to some of us that this would cause complications with .eu and possibly other domain name extensions.

Over the past year, it’s become clear that the European Commission, who mandate the .eu domain name policy, weren’t interested in providing a “soft landing” for impacted registrants of .eu domain names. While their position has morphed slightly over the past year, it’s very clear that they were happy to let existing registrants of .eu domain names residing in the UK, including Northern Ireland, to simply lose their domains. In fact, they were pushing the .eu registry to pull all .eu domains from UK registrants on March 29th.

For a multitude of reasons, the EC’s position on Brexit and .eu domains is terrible. It’s the kind of approach that would undermine confidence not only in .eu domain names but in domains in general.

The original date for the UK’s withdrawal from the EU is March 29th, however, the current status of Brexit is very much in flux.

Earlier this morning EURid contacted all .eu accredited registrars to inform them that pending clarity on the UK’s situation that their Brexit plans were being put on hold.

“Due to ongoing uncertainties over the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, EURid has placed on hold any plan regarding domain names registered to individuals and undertakings located in the United Kingdom and Gibraltar. Those plans were set out in European Commission’s notice to .eu stakeholders, published on 28 March 2018 (see Notice to stakeholders: withdrawal of the United Kingdom and EU rules on .eu domain names, 27 March 2018).

As soon as we receive official updates from the European Commission on how to proceed, we will amend the plans on the Brexit dedicated web page and communicate with affected stakeholders as appropriate, and as instructed by the Commission”

Hopefully, in the interim period, the EC will finally realize how bad their current approach to this situation is.

You can check the current status of EURid’s Brexit plans here.