Letter from Erkki Liikanen to Mike Roberts Regarding .eu Top-Level Domain 6 July 2000

EUROPEAN COMMISSION Erkki Liikanen Member of the Commission

The European Commission has thoroughly studied this initiative with the European institutions, ISPs, industry and the local Internet community in Europe. Earlier this year we conducted a broad and open public consultation on the proposal, based on a consultation document that has been posted on the web. That consultation confirmed widespread support from major Internet interests in this proposal. Moreover, the setting up of the .EU Domain is now part of the eEurope Action Plan, endorsed at the recent Feira European Council and thus endorsed at the level of the Heads of State/Government of the 15 EU Member States.

Last year the Commission also asked the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency to agree to using the reserved EU code for an Internet TLD. ISO has agreed to our request and has decided to extend the scope of the reservation of the code element EU to cover any application of ISO 3166-1 that needs a coded representation of the name European Union, including its being used as an Internet Top Level Domain. Therefore, we hereby request that the .EU Domain should be delegated to the European Union by ICANN.

On our part, I am glad to inform you that the Commission has encouraged the Internet community in Europe to undertake preparatory work for the creation of an appropriate Registry organisation. This Registry should be operated in a similar manner to the existing country code registries at the European level, particularly regarding its relationship with the relevant public authority, in this case the European Union.

It is also our intention to ensure that the new Registry would conform to the rules and best-practices established by ICANN, as appropriate, and that the Registry would take full account of the guidelines for the operation of such registries recently adopted by the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee.

I would be grateful if you could inform the Board of ICANN and its Staff of our intention that the Domain .EU would be introduced into the Domain Name System before the end of the year. If you feel it necessary, we could provide further explanation for the ICANN Board meeting to be held in Yokohama mid-July.

Meanwhile, please do not hesitate to contact the Directorate General Information Society (either Mr.C.Wilkinson, member of the GAC, or Mr.Paul Verhoef, Head of Unit ff International Affairs) should you or the ICANN Staff have any question in this regard.

Yours sincerely,

(signed, Erkki Liikanen)

cc: Ms Esther Dyson, Chairman, ICANN Board

Attachment: Letter to Secretary William Daley.