Here, there, and everywhere: tracking UK-owned .eu domains in a post-brexit world

The history of .eu 

The .eu TLD is managed by EURid, the European Registry for Internet Domains. It was established to provide a unique European identity on the internet and is available to residents, organizations, and businesses based within the European Union, as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. This is monitored by the registrar—the organization that facilitates connecting a chosen domain name to a chosen TLD—who collects information about the registration depending on the TLD restrictions. For the .eu case, registrar GoDaddy requires address validation at registration:

This already shows a point of contention: the registrars say upfront that UK addresses are not allowed. But how did this happen, and where do we go from here?

Brexit's impact on .eu domains

The UK's official withdrawal from the European Union on January 31, 2020—popularly known as Brexit—set in motion a series of changes for .eu domain holders based in the UK. These changes were implemented in stages:

Ineligibility for new registrations

From January 1, 2021, UK residents and organizations became ineligible to register new .eu domains. This swift effect of Brexit closed off a previously available option for UK entities seeking to establish a European online presence.

Suspension of existing domains

On January 1, 2021, existing .eu domains registered to UK addresses were suspended. This meant that while the domains still existed, they ceased to function, potentially causing significant disruption to businesses and individuals relying on these domains for their online presence. The idea was that most UK-based .eu domains would transfer before this date, but for various reasons, this was not universally possible or accomplished. 

Withdrawal and deletion

Following the suspension period, all suspended .eu domains registered to UK addresses were withdrawn on January 1, 2022. These domains became available for general registration three months later, on April 1, 2022, for registrants with a validated EU address. This final step effectively removed these domains from UK registrants, unless they had taken specific actions to maintain eligibility.

What happened next? Consequences for UK-based domain registrants

Losing a domain can lead to various complications for businesses. Legal and contractual issues may arise when legal documents reference the domain, necessitating updates and potential renegotiations. For businesses that use the domain for their email addresses and communication channels, the loss of the domain may cause major interruptions and loss of contacts or conversations. Equally, if a domain owner has spent time and money on search engine optimization and marketing efforts tied to a domain, this effort may be lost and requires a complete rebuild of an online presence. Branding and recognizability can also suffer from a forced switch like this: domain owners may lose their online identity having to trade for a less catchy domain name with another TLD, especially if their original name is not available. It’s easy to see that ‘vanman.eu’, for example, sounds a lot more authentic and authoritative than aberdeenvanman.com.

Mitigation Strategies

To maintain their .eu domains, UK registrants were pushed to take one of two actions. 

• Establish EU citizenship: registrants would be required to change and provide evidence of residency or citizenship in another EU member states. 
• Transfer ownership: UK registrants could transfer ownership of their .eu domains to EU-based subsidiaries or partners.

The comical case of leave.eu 

The case of “leave.eu”, though the domain is no longer active, provides a notable example of the Brexit impact. This pro-Brexit campaign website, ironically, faced the loss of its domain due to Brexit. To maintain their online address, the organization elected to move its registration address to EU-member Ireland—demonstrating the lengths to which some entities (even those who desperately fought for these changes) went to preserve their .eu presence.

Where did the domains go?

For this article, we were not specifically interested in the ones that maintained their domain via the mitigation strategies we mentioned above, but rather those that moved their domain to a new TLD. Where did they go, and were they able to retain their original name?

In the course of our research, we looked at 4,160 active .eu website that were allocated to a UK registrant in December 2020. As you can see in Figure 1, there’s a sharp drop in the returned response—meaning this number of websites are no longer accessible after January 2021. This was obviously expected, given the registry’s post-Brexit policy. Over time, the number continues to drop gradually. The number of UK-registered .eu websites that redirect is 828, and Figure 2 shows the top TLDs these domains redirect to. The majority redirects to a .com domain, followed by .co.uk and then to (another) .eu. Notable is that 46% of the .eu to .com redirecting domains actually redirect to www.sedo.com, a domain parking company,

Next, we were interested to see if the ones that redirect were able to maintain their name. Indeed, we found 276 domains that redirect to the same name, i.e. only the TLD portion changed. The remainders redirect to domains that are not identical to the original, but maintain part of the former name. For examples, see Figure 4. We suspect that in most of these cases the intended, ideal, and original name was not available for registration. In all of these cases, the domain name length increased; common variations included the addition of geographical location, hyphens, or company legal structures (e.g., ltd).

The Brexit-induced changes to .eu domain eligibility have had far-reaching consequences for UK-based registrants. While some were able to adapt by transferring registration to an EU-based country, many faced the loss of their established online identities. This situation underscores the importance of considering geopolitical factors in domain registration strategies and highlights the need for businesses to have contingency plans for their online presence.