.eu celebrates 5th birthday

Brussels, 6 April 2011 – .eu domain name registrations have doubled in five years, reveals EURid the .eu top-level domain (TLD) registry, marking the domain’s fifth birthday.

"Today we celebrate .eu's public launch five years ago. Steady growth since then has reinforced .eu's position as one of the world’s ten largest top-level domains," said Marc Van Wesemael, General Manager of EURid. "This proves that .eu gives companies an effective means to present themselves online as open for business across Europe."

Five years on and going strong

European Union businesses, organisations and residents embraced .eu web addresses when they became publically available on 7 April 2006, registering 1.7 million within the launch month. Now, five years on, .eu registrations have doubled to 3.4 million, making .eu the ninth largest TLD in the world.

In the past five years, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Estonia have had the strongest .eu growth rates and Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Poland have emerged as .eu's largest markets.

To put this growth in context, certain EU countries have shown more growth in .eu registrations since April 2006 than in their respective national TLD, including .eu's largest market Germany:

.eu birthday celebrations

EURid celebrated .eu's fifth anniversary at the European Parliament in Strasbourg with a birthday cake cutting ceremony yesterday.

A .eu information stand is open to the public at InfEuropa on Rond-Point Schuman, Brussels until 15 April, where the birthday issue of EURid's .eu Identity magazine is available. The magazine features .eu case studies and expert interviews. An online version is published HERE.

* Data from the Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries (CENTR) and the TLD registries for Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany and Lithuania.