How .eu became an experiment in European digital identity

An article published on 30 September 2026 by Rapporteur and written by Martina Monti.

European digital identity can start with something as small as two letters and a dot: .eu.

Twenty years after .eu was launched, the domain has turned Europe into a piece of everyday internet infrastructure.

When you set up a website, choosing between .com, .be, .it or .eu hardly feels like a declaration of identity. Mostly, you just want the website to work.

“A .fr does not offer more or better connectivity for your website than a .eu,” said Hans Seeuws, business operations manager at EURid, the non-profit organisation that runs the .eu domain under contract with the European Commission, managing around 3.8 million domain registrations.

The internet, after all, is “global by design”, he added, stressing that a .eu website is not technically more European.

And yet, as Seeuws told Rapporteur, your domain choice can say something about “what community you decide to be a part of.” That is because choosing .eu means “you clearly want to distinguish yourself from a national top-level domain or a .com.”

Choosing .eu

For businesses and organisations, .eu is an easy way of saying: we are European. But what does that mean?

“The nature of European identity is unfixed and persistently contested,” said Juan Fernández, professor of sociology at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, who has recently published a meta-analysis on the determinants of European identification.

“There is no single way of identifying with Europe and no version of European identity is more authentic than another.”

For some, being European is being a citizen of the EU community. For others, it is more cultural and about traditions linked to Christianity, Greek philosophy, Roman law, he said.

Online (but arguably also offline), Seeuws argues that .eu means more than just belonging. It comes with rules.

“If you register a .eu, how we handle your data is fully compliant with the GDPR,” he said, referring to the EU’s data protection law. The registry is also subject to European cybersecurity requirements.

“So it is not just that I can do business across borders,” he said. “It is this ecosystem of more and better consumer protection that you then also benefit from.”

This points to a broader idea: being European is also about expectations, including about privacy, consumer protection, and accountability.

Fernández said that “there is a widespread sense among European publics that we share some common values: support for human rights, the welfare state, rule of law and market economy, among others”.

In fact, research shows that “European citizens clearly attach meaning to major symbols of the EU, like the flag, the euro, and the anthem”, he said..

“European identity has quite diverse individual foundation, and the context and life experiences of individuals really matter for these forms of ‘we-feeling’,” said Fernández.

After the UK left the EU, for example, British citizens who no longer met the eligibility rules could no longer hold .eu domains on the same basis. Registrations – predictably – dropped.

In fact, anyone registering (or holding) a .eu domain must also have a link to Europe.

But online, European identity does not necessarily need to look European. Sometimes it is just “an emotional attachment to Europe”, he said.

A matter of money

There are around 3.8 million .eu registrations. EURid said it regularly finds attempts to use .eu addresses to sell fake products, impersonate brands or register trademarks that do not belong to whoever is behind the website.

Over the past year, Seeuws said, the organisation carried out around 18,000 identity checks. In roughly 80% of the suspicious cases it investigates, it eventually suspends the domain. That is still a tiny share of the nearly 4 million domains registered.

“If we were just a commercial actor,” Seeuws said, suspending registrations would amount to “cutting off our own flesh”.

Commercially speaking, that is true. Every suspended domain is one less registration. But EURid and the Commission argue keeping .eu a “safe space” is part of the point. Trust is a word he kept coming back to.

Of course, not everyone registering a domain is having an existential debate about European identity. Sometimes .eu is just cheaper than a country’s national domain.

Seeuws gave Croatia as an example. A registrar told him a .hr domain could cost around €50, or several times the average price of a domain elsewhere in Europe.

EURid does not sell domain names directly to the public, but works with around 700 registrars that act as the middlemen between the registry and the person buying the domain.

He compared them to shops. “If you want to buy a laptop, you probably do not go directly to the brand. You go to a retailer,” he said. “Registering a domain works in much the same way.”

Asked whether any broader patterns stood out, Seeuws said interest in .eu tends to rise after a country adopts the euro. “There seems to be a sort of click they make”.

Organisations need to be established in the European Economic Area, comprising all EU countries plus Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. Private individuals must be citizens or residents of the eligible country.

Digital sovereignty

A domain name obviously won’t rescue the continent from Silicon Valley. But owning .eu can give a person or organisation a small degree of control over their digital identity.

“You don’t necessarily need to switch away from Google or from your provider,” Seeuws said. But register your own domain and link your email to it, and you become a little less dependent on any one service.

“Wherever you go, whichever country or whichever internet provider you use, this domain name travels with you,” he said.

It is digital sovereignty on a very small scale. And perhaps that is what makes .eu interesting after 20 years, as, sometimes, all it takes is a few letters and a dot.