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I am glad to announce that the European Commission has officially launched the process to select the next Registry for the .eu Top-Level Domain (TLD). This is done through a competitive procedure that will be concluded, by October 2021, with the signature of a service concession contract between the European Commission and the entity that will be entrusted with the organisation, administration and management of the .eu TLD. This contract will enter into force on 13 October 2022, upon the expiry of the current concession contract.
Why this call might interest you? Managing the .eu TLD means managing a strong brand, linked to the European identity and supporting online transactions across the whole Digital Single Market. The .eu TLD is one of the largest country-code TLDs, currently holding over 3.6 million registrations, as well as a large cross-section of private and business registrants, and it is also used by the Union institutions, agencies and bodies. With the reform of the rules governing this TLD (Regulation EU 2019/517), the outreach of .eu has expanded, as EU citizens may now register a .eu domain name regardless of their place of residence.
The .eu TLD Registry is called upon to help enhance the Union identity and promote Union values online, such as multilingualism, respect for users’ privacy and security, respect for human rights, as well as specific Union priorities in the digital area. The .eu Registry is, in fact, regularly involved in promoting EU objectives in the field of internet governance, including by participating in relevant international fora.
Who can apply? All economic operators that meet the requirements indicated in the call for selection are welcome to apply. The entity that becomes the Registry shall be not-for-profit; however, this requirement does not prevent commercial entities, including those that are for-profit, from creating an entity or being part of a consortium that applies, as long as the entity that is proposed for the purpose of the .eu Registry activities is not-for-profit.
The key date to remember is the deadline to apply: 30/12/2020. All the rest of the information on the call for selection call can be found here.
Good luck to all the applicants!
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Thanks for the article Pearse. Obviously the European Commission has a much better sense of how to manage and select a TLD registry operator in the public interest, than ICANN’s corrupt, captured, and incompetent methods of selecting gTLD registry operators, which violate RFC 1591, are contrary to the advice from the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division in 2008 via NTIA (pp. 4-9), and are in breach of ICANN’s duties as a fiduciary and steward of the global DNS. ICANN has failed the global internet community, including domain name registrants. ICANN needs to be replaced.