.EU Update
23 March 2005
Earlier this week, ICANN's Board took steps to authorize the delegation of .EU as a ccTLD (country code Top Level Domain), and for ICANN Staff to enter into an agreement with EURid and to complete the delegation of .EU. The technical teams of ICANN's IANA function and EURid are working together to complete the entry of .EU in the DNS root.
The two-letter code for the European Union (.EU) appears on the ISO 3166-1 reserved list of alpha two-letter codes of country names. At the request of the European Commission, the ISO Maintenance Agency extended the scope of this reservation to cover any application of the two-letter code representing the name European Union, including its being used as a TLD. Following this step, the European Union commenced a process, in partnership with ICANN, to designate the .EU ccTLD.
Delegation of a new top level domain requires the completion of a number of procedures. The key requirement is that for each domain there is a designated delegee for supervising that domain's name space. In the case of .EU, the European Commission identified EURid as the appropriate organization to manage .EU.
