IDNA2008 Legacy Policy Amendment (Greek Ending Sigma, German Eszett)

Following the implementation of the IDNA2008 protocol for the .eu TLD, supported domain name characters have changed, as new characters have been introduced, while others phased out.

Specifically, the IDNA2008 protocol supports both the German Eszett (ß) and the Greek ending sigma (ς) on input as fully allowed characters. With that said, due to the introduction of the homoglyph bundling mechanism, both characters are part of the homoglyph bundling algorithm, meaning that currently registered domain names containing the characters “ss”, or the Greek normal sigma (σ), prevent domain names with the German Eszett (ß) or Greek ending sigma (ς) from being registered.

However, considering the limited support of the newly introduced characters by many web browsers, a registrant who has registered a domain name containing the characters “ss”, or the Greek normal sigma (σ), or vice versa - German Eszett (ß) or Greek ending sigma (ς) - can request that EURid activate the corresponding domain name written with the German Eszett (ß) or Greek ending sigma (ς) - or vice versa with the characters “ss” or the Greek normal sigma (σ) - at any time.

In this case, both domain names will coexist and be assigned and invoiced to the same registrant.

Please be advised that EURid will continue to assess the support of the IDNA2008 protocol through the most common client software (web browsers, email clients, etc.) and oblige registrars to choose which of the two coexisting domain name to keep activated once the aforementioned support is deemed sufficient.

Please also note that our legacy policy (as seen at the bottom of the page here ) - has been amended to account for this change and contains additional useful information. Please have a look at it before contacting EURid, as your question might be answered there.